*header photo via Pinterest*
There's never really a moment when Lee and I are not dreaming up house projects to work on. If you're new here, back in 2019 Lee and I purchased a home that was in need of a lot of TLC. She was straight from the 70s with painted wood paneling and all. Over the course of the past 2 1/2 years we've been slowly and thoughtfully working on creating a home we're proud of.
We've brought the blog along on so many renovations - from a complete kitchen restructuring to my task of painting every wall in the house 4+ times to fully remove the yellow paint. Our last project wrapped up mid-summer with the beautiful addition of our custom built bookcases and fireplace in our living room. Since then we've been taking a much-needed physical break to determine our plan moving forward.
Well, this year we're going to focus our time and effort on the exterior of our house to boost the curb appeal - gutters, paint, landscaping . . . lots of landscaping . . . will be on our to-do list from March -summer. But in the meantime our cozy winter projects are indoors and a bit more personal – a total office refresh!
Lee and I both work full-time from home and we are so fortunate to be in a position where he and I have two separate offices in our house, plus our master and guest bedrooms. Back in December we took a look at our office spaces and declared them a State of Mess. Honestly, I'm a little embarrassed to show you my office at the moment. But never fear! I have some big plans over the next 6 weeks.
Ahh yikes. My current space. Since we moved in and I claimed it as my office I haven't really touched too much due to time and budget constraints.
As a homeowner, I've found that rooms without purpose or intentionality soon become a dumping ground for clutter no matter how clean or OCD you are. That has definitely been the case for my office over the past 2 years.
And now it's time to add a bit of purpose back into the space. At least to become less of just "a room with a desk" and more a functional, beautiful, and inspiring space I'm proud of.
The Mood Board + Inspiration
The inspiration is definitely stemming from English Cottage vibes - something I've wanted to do for the longest time in a space, but ultimately feels a bit to feminine for a fully shared living space. I'm not fully leaning into the trend to embrace the true shabby chic decor and stylings of an English cottage, but overall that is where the majority of my inspiration is coming from.
I've started sourcing quite a few of the items to pull this look off and it will take a bit of time and love in the space to bring it up to the standard of the rest of our house. My first task is removing all the old trim and quarter round around the floor, giving the floors themselves a really good clean from paint specks, replacing all the old outlet covers.
From there, we'll re-trim around the floor with craftsman style trim to match the rest of the house then it's on to all the fun updates like:
- Adding a chair rail height bead board around the entire room
- Painting both the floor and door trim (and maybe the window trim) and the bead board in this beautiful taupe color paint by Clare called Beigeing
- Turning my desk onto the window wall and removing every other piece of furniture in the room
- Switching out the ceiling fan to this light
- Adding a cozy chair and side table in the corner by the closet (I have my eye on this one!)
- I purchased this beautiful natural rug that will cover the whole floor and soften the room up a bit
- In the opposite corner I'm going to slowly create what I'm calling an external closet. Basically a few rods and shelves that I can display some beautiful wardrobe items instead of keeping them in boxes.
- And the piece de resistance will be beautiful custom-made curtains. I've worked on sourcing the perfect linen fabric for about 2 months and when I found the right one it all came into place. And I ordered this curtain rod to tie it all together.
a very rough layout of the room when finished
I'm not an interior designer so none of this is to scale.
concept for my external closet
photo via Pinterest
A Note on The Process
I, just as much as the next person, get so impatient when it comes to home projects. It's fun to conceptualize but much harder to wait for projects to get started, materials to be sourced, and a room to come together.
But if I've learned anything over the past 2 years is that there is beauty in waiting. In order to get something right the first time patience is the key to success. Especially with home projects. You may want a room to feel cozy and vintage and layered but you're never going to achieve that by copy and pasting a room out of a magazine, Target or IKEA. A space, your space, should reflect your personality and unique perspective on design (even if you're not sure you have one!)
And for that reason a room or house should never be "done".