Home Office: How to Redesign a Space

Today, I am finally sharing my brand new Home Office. We have been working on this office for quite some time. It all started with the Billy Bookcase. I always say this when we finish a room but this is now one of my favorite rooms!

I have wanted my own office space for such a long time. I did carve out a space in the basement but seriously, we knew I was never going to go down there. I love the desk we made but I really do not like going in the basement…at all.

I could not be happier with my office. This space has been totally transformed. Orginally, it was a formal living room used only as a walk through to the Sunroom. It was dark and not my style at all! I don’t know if I ever really liked this room. I think because the building plans said it was a formal living room I thought I had to decorate it as a formal living room.

This is what it looked like before. (excuse the Christmas photos, I can’t find any of my other before shots)

Just looking at these photos is stressing me out. The first thing we did in here when we decided to revamp this into my office space was add chair rail and molding or shadow boxes. The room used to be navy blue from top to bottom. Once the molding was done, we painted the bottom portion bright white. Then we added the billy bookcases.

I still cannot get over the billy book cases my husband reworked for me. Still a top favorite. I found the pharmacy lamp at Target and the rug at IKEA. The prices were great for these two pieces.

I showed you the the desk here. Once I sanded it down, I painted it a bright white, I added the gold rub’n buff to the carved details. It was not as gold as I thought it would be so I might go back and add a bit more. I do love all the gold touches in the room with the black and grey.

I picked my desk chair up at T.J. Maxx. I got 10% of the original price because the lining underneath the chair needed repaired. It took me less than 5 minutes to fix it.

I shared my gold mirror on Thrift Shop Thursday #8. The candlesticks I sprayed black with touches of gold. They were orginally maroon. You can see them in the before photo earlier in the post. The one thing I didn’t do that I was planning on doing was switch out the marble surround. I wanted to do a black granite surround. I already had enough granite left over from the kitchen reno to do the surround but not enough for the hearth. The estimate I received was way too high and I thought I would just live with the green or find a way to paint. If anyone has any suggestions on how to paint it and still have a functioning fireplace, let me know.

I love this photo. I am not sure if Charlie likes my new office or not! He sure looks cute though!

Anyway, the paint color we used is McCormick’s Santo. Of all the colors we chose, this is my favorite. The small lamps on the back wall used to be an oil rubbed bronze. I sprayed them gold and added new black shades with a gold lining. It picks up on all the gold and black in the office space.

The chair and

the pillow,

were both Pier 1 finds. I was so excited to finally find a set of chairs for the office. I ordered them through the store and got lucky because once I ordered them they went on back order. A week later I picked them up. My dad and son were helping me put them together when we noticed that the leg would not attached to the frame. The wood that it was supposed to screw into was destroyed. I was thinking to myself, yep, that’s what happens when you get too excited over material things. It was a chair, but I really, really liked it. I called the store and she said I could return it but they were not sure if they were going to be getting any more in stock. I told her I really wanted a matching set so I would just return both of them. She said she would give me 50% off if I thought it was something I could fix. I told her I would call her back. My husband said he could fix it. He basically rebuilt the entire frame and I saved 50% in the process.

I ordered the initial pillows online. I just liked them!

The framed photos on the far left are a couple of pictures my husband took. My son and I took them to Office Depot and had them enlarged and printed. I still might switch these out for some of his black and white photos and take the color photos down to the Island Home. I just couldn’t make up my mind which pictures I wanted!

I hope you enjoyed the tour of my home office space. I for one love it. Thanks to my guy for putting in all the work. Thanks to BK for all the heavy lifting!

Until next time,