It’s time for the ORC final reveal home office post! This was a labor of love and you will not believe the difference.

Eight weeks of work and I am elated! This space started life out just fine, it had beautiful floors, wide baseboards, and a neutral color palette. It just lacked the character and storage components that make for good design. Ready to our ORC final reveal home office “after” photos? I hope so because I am still in awe that we pulled it off and with a little flair to boot in a very ornery 2020.

Before I share the reveal, I want to take a moment and say thank you to Linda for creating the biannual event, One Room Challenge and to Better Homes and Gardens for being the media sponsor this round. I am a big fan of this event, from the beginning watching mundane rooms transform into unique beauties seemingly overnight to jumping in 5 years ago with our pantry makeover. I have finished several rooms thanks to the challenge and I have made some pretty incredible friends through the process.

The Beginning-

Doing a home office makeover was not originally on my list for this spring round. I had actually slated our master bathroom for my room of choice. Life has a way of shaking us up in order to move us forward.

Due to circumstances, we ended up moving mid-January five hours away from what I had thought was our dream and it was…for a season.

A lot of emotions are wrapped up in this little section of the beginning and I am working on sharing it all with you in detail soon. I believe our journeys are meant to bolster each other up and I have walked a very interesting path as of late (ha!).

So, we are settling in to a wonderful new community in a beautiful house that is a blank canvas. The home office seemed like a natural pick since we have been up to our eyeballs in moving boxes and many of those happen to house a ton of lovely books.

            

I was even more convinced to take on the office/study when the pandemic hit and everyone had to work from home.

During this time our finances took a hit and I started to look at ways to help my family which led me to begin doing virtual/E design sooner than I had initially planned and a dedicated space for all of us to use became a priority. Again, life and the curveballs.

I had so much fun pulling this design board together.

I chose to keep the walls and library wall all the same color in an effort to keep the room larger. I LOVE color and would normally lean toward something bolder for the built-ins but I am so glad I went with my gut.

The Now-

This was a behemoth of a project and I think it turned out better than I could have hoped! Ready to see the new bold and beautiful home office?

Take a look at where we are now!

Can you believe this is the same room? I am so very happy with the results. We had to do a little tweaking here and there, sometimes the little changes, the little points of flexibility leads us to a better outcome… at least it did here.

Take the chairs, I made a decision to reupholster the chairs I had due to the chairs I had picked were out of stock and our budget for this room had to be cut. Aren’t they gorgeous? They really make the space and if I had not had to rethink and reuse – these unique beauties would not exist.

One more example of compromise, the design board light fixture is phenomenal BUT when the budget was squeezed – it had to go. In its place, this beauty works well. I painted sections of the fixture to mimic the more expensive one and I really like it. The black paint balances the chairs and the library ladder system.

Once the furniture came into the room, it all fit perfectly. Creating a room layout allowed me to see that the original accent table I had planned to go in between the chairs was a smidge too big. Like slightly singing off-key is so much worse than being completely off – don’t ask me how I know this ?.

The Library wall-

We reused bookcases from the previous office space and added a couple of more. Then stretched the built-ins to the ceiling by adding boxes to the top. We kept the glass cabinets in the same configuration so we could house our large MAC and create another work area.

The floating desk was a little too “airy” so at the last minute (literally) I made and upholstered a bench to slide underneath. In LOVE with it! I have never upholstered a bench before so I have a few tips I can offer if you choose to do this.

Tutorial coming for you in the next few weeks because- it isn’t hard to do.

I let the library wall act as my art for the most part. Aren’t books wonderful, there is nothing like holding the written word especially in our world of hi-tech. These books are very special to us. Each one has been read and loved by family, some of these precious jewels are about 400 years old.

This home office doubles as a quiet little library to spend hours reading and listening to beautiful music, oh my heart is happy!

Let’s talk about that wonderful and useful ladder! This was a gifted item from the good folks at Rockler. I will be doing a detailed post soon showing you how amazingly easy it is to add a Rockler ladder kit to your bookcases.

Seriously, the ladder was put together by my 15-year-old son with a little supervision. Anyone can do this!

And while we are on the subject of easy updates… see those cute stacked little boxes? I updated them with paint and few extras!

To keep my glass desk tidy, I use organizers. I had these organizers already but the original color was too mundane. So, what’s a girl to do? Oh, she grabs her acrylic paints and brushes and remedies the situation. I had so much fun with remaking these!

      

I love repurposing items and these two are no exception. They started life as candle holders. Yep, and now they hold my pens and paperclips. Guess what, I’m writing a post on the paint techniques I used – I know you must be breathing a sigh of relief (haha).

Let’s take one more look at the before and after, shall we?

         

        

None of this could have happened without the help of my hubby. This was a herculean feat that I alone could not have pulled off. He faithfully worked nights and weekends to help bring this eclectic curated space to fruition.

My son jumped in when and where he could be helpful and this momma is so grateful to both these guys.

Thank you friends for following along with me during this 8-week epic adventure! Be sure to click HERE to see all the amazing transformations – there is no shortage of design talent and skill with my design/blogger friends!

Catch up with the Home Office Project:

Week 1 // Week 2 // Week 3 // Week 4 // Week 6 // Week 7

and for the sake of cheese… these! ?

        

 

 

‘Til Later My Friends!