Today is all about new projects and a new room makeover as we start planning our home office.

For as long as I worked in a cubicle I dreamed of having my own office. And not just any office, an office I could design and decorate myself … and preferably at home. When we were looking for our house two years ago the number one item on my list was a room that could be our home office. When we found our house with the perfect room for my office that even had the french doors I wanted, I finally made the leap to starting my own web development business and working out of the office in our home.

I have been really happy ever since. I still love this room, mostly because it is the room in our home that I spend the most time in during the day. For the most part I had it decorated close to what I wanted. I love the large desk which was the very first piece of furniture Brent ever made me.

But while it was close to what I wanted my office to be, it wasn’t quite there yet. I didn’t have that deep down gut feeling that this room was 100% finished. Obviously because it didn’t have the wood floors I wanted yet but also because of lack of organization. The large black shelves are from my first apartment and while they worked fine in that space and have been okay in this space, sometimes I feel like they are swallowing the room and making it feel smaller than it is.

My office was at the bottom of the list when it came to rooms to work on (our garage/shop is always at the top but consistently gets bumped, poor Brent) until suddenly we decided to shuffle some rooms around. Just like the guest room makeover, something comes up and the list goes out the window and suddenly we find ourselves knee deep planning a makeover in a room we weren’t expecting. And I couldn’t be happier.

We are now starting the process of moving my office across the hall to the open room that is now our “studio” aka empty room we shoot our videos in that is next to our library. I’m saying bye to my french doors even though I will be looking straight at them from my new desk view and I am even saying bye to my current desk. I am super sad about this because Brent built it for me. He is not sentimental in the slightest when it comes to furniture. I’m all, “But you made it for me!” His response, “I’ll make you a new one.” Luckily, I found it a good home where I know it will be appreciated and get a lot of use.

Our thinking was if we are going to spend the time to move everything, we might as well take the time to make it feel 100% right. So that means new desk, new storage solution (custom built cabinets, yay!) and some other really fun projects that we are really excited to tackle.

You may be wondering why I am moving my office out of the perfect office room. Well, that is because… it’s a surprise. Gray House Studio always seems to have exciting things on the horizon these days and we can’t wait to share what we have coming up next. But you will have to wait just a little bit longer to find out…

Planning Our Home Office

Now, sit back, relax and let me walk you through how we are planning our home office. If this were Fixer Upper I would have homemade cookies warm from the oven and freshly squeezed lemonade in mason jars garnished with lemon slices for you. Good thing you can’t see through the computer at what is really sitting on my table right now as I type this (a half eaten package of Twizzlers).

Here are our ideas and inspirations for how we want to transform this room into my perfect work environment.

Geometric Rug
It is not in the budget or time frame to do wood floors yet, sigh, but one improvement we can make right away is to add a large rug. I plan on having my desk float in the middle of the room. I am not very productive when I stare at a wall but that means cords will have to make their way to the wall somehow and a large rug is the perfect way to hide and keep me from tripping over the cords. I really like this rug, it is neutral but has a fun pattern to keep it interesting.

New Wood Desk inspired by display at Restoration Hardware
I still can’t believe I have to part with that huge desk Brent built me but one weekend when Brent and I were window display shopping, that is where we go around and act like weirdos by taking pictures of all the store displays to get ideas for our home, we came across this really cool wooden table at Restoration Hardware used to display teas. We both instantly knew it was the perfect inspiration for the new desk we would build for our home office. We are pretty excited about this project.

ÄPPLARÖ Wall Panels
These wall panels from IKEA really have me thinking about creating a large indoor plant wall display on the wall behind my desk. I am not sure if we would modify this exact piece or make our own wall trellis of sorts to pull off this look. My web development business is named Naturally Design so I really like the idea of incorporating a lot of natural elements and what is cooler than a plant wall display?

Schoolhouse Pendant Light
We are already ahead on this one. Last year we updated the lighting in the room by taking down the old, gross 90’s fixture and replacing it with our own DIY version of a Rejuvenation schoolhouse pendant light. We still really like how this looks in the room so it will be staying.

Plants, Lots of Plants
Like I mentioned before, I really want to incorporate a lot of greenery in this room especially on the accent wall. I am 50/50 on whether I want to really step up my game in trying to keep plants alive or just get realistic looking faux plants. Maybe I will do half and half.

Cabinets
The cabinets are the first project we will be building and I am really excited about this project. It is the first time we will build custom cabinets, dipping our toes in the water before we do the bathrooms or kitchen I suppose. I can’t wait to finally have a designated space to organize all my office supplies and files. The best part of DIY, being able to build pieces that exactly fit your needs. We plan on painting them a nice gray color and then adding a butcher block top.

Gray Chevron Chair
As you can see in the picture above, I already have this chair in my office. I got it a year or two ago and love it. It is comfy for my clients to sit for long client meetings and it isnt’ too big so it fits well in the space and of course it is my signature neutral with a fun pattern. Because obviously I am slightly afraid of color, well except in the guest room. This chair makes the cut and will be moving across the hall.

Wood and Metal Desk Tray
I love organizing and I love paper so I really love this wood and metal desk tray. I am looking forward to tackling a few smaller DIY organization projects for my office with Brent like building a similar tray, a computer stand, business card holders, and maybe a new iPad stand.

Office Print
I am planning on having the pops of color in this room come in the form of some fun and motivational framed prints to display in the office. This one seems appropriate since I spend so much time here.

That is what we have planned for the next two months. I am pretty excited and thankful that Brent has graciously set aside his long overdue garage makeover to help me make this room feel 100% finished. Be sure to follow along as we post all of the projects we build for this room as well as stay tuned for our final reveal of our new home office.

Behind the Scenes: Cabinet Building Part 1

We have started a vlog! We thought it would be fun to share what really happens during our project building sessions, the good, the bad, the funny and maybe the mundane (Brent gives a short math lesson and then realizes he did the math wrong). In this vlog we are working on the first part of our cabinet building project and Brent gets a little sidetracked.

The Couple That DIYs Together – “The Weekend Project”

What happens when you just can’t quite get on the same page when it comes to that weekend side table DIY project and when that perfect idea in your head doesn’t quite translate to the paper…

A Little Bit of a Backstory

You may know by now that Brent and I met in high school. But what you may not know is long before (10 years ago) we were a married couple tackling home renovation projects together we were just a couple of teenagers working on website and video projects together in high school.

Brent and I went to the same high school for four years but didn’t actually cross paths until the last semester of our senior year of high school when our web design teacher selected each of us to be the school’s web interns. The first day I met him was the first day of the internship. I remember feeling nervous walking to the room where we would be working because I had no idea who Brent Richardson was and the idea of having to collaborate with someone you have never met is a bit intimidating.

However, the minute I walked into the room and was greeted by his smile, I was instantly won over. Brent is charming that way. For the next five months we worked together on making websites, videos, and logos but mostly we talked and looked at magazines, ran errands together and genuinely became friends. It is rare to find someone that you get along and work with so well, especially on creative projects but Brent and I always just meshed from the first day.

Inspiration for this Video Series

Fast forward eight years from when we turned in our intern badges, we were married and bought a house and about to embark on our largest creative collaboration yet, renovating our home (and documenting it here on the Gray House Studio blog). We worked so well together in high school so we thought this was going to be so easy. And in a way it was because we have a similar design style and were on the same page for how we want our house to look.

The complicated part was actually the execution. We found that when two people who make their living doing creative things try and come together and work on projects that they are both very passionate about, there is bound to be a battle of control and a difference of opinions. And let’s face it, we are much more invested in our projects now as 27 year olds than we were at 17.

We both have our areas of expertise, but neither of us wanted to be stuck in doing just “the part we were good at”. I desperately wanted to be the one that sketched up my furniture ideas and to be able to work with my hands building things since my full time job is working on the computer on websites. Let’s just say there were some disagreements about our process, collaboration roles and miscommunication. And also, no matter how hard I try, I am horrible at drawing. I just am.

Lessons Learned

When it comes to working on DIY home renovation projects now, Brent and I have really found our sweet spot. Our communication has improved greatly, we let each other shine where our strengths are but also teach and support each other when it comes to tackling the areas we didn’t feel as comfortable in before.

Brent has been showing me techniques for using the miter saw so the past couple projects I have been the one making the cuts on the miter saw and now I know why they are called power tools, they make you feel so powerful! I have been encouraging him to write more here on the blog so you can get to know his hilarious personality.

This past weekend we thought it would be fun to make a new video series poking fun and exaggerating what our early project process looked like that other couples might be able to relate to. Because let’s face it when couples DIY together, there is bound to be some passive aggressiveness, miscommunication, disagreements and mishaps and we look back and laugh at it now.

Believe me when I say we still have our mishaps, miscommunication and DIY fails but we tend to laugh a lot more about them these days and take it all in stride because when a couple DIYs together, you never know what is going to happen.

We hope you enjoy this little video as much as we enjoyed making it and if you can relate, feel free to share!

If you have had a funny mishap while working on a DIY project together, please share them in the comment section and we might incorporate them into our next The Couple That DIYs Together video.

To stay up to date on the videos in this series, subscribe to our YouTube channel.

UPDATE 11/01/15: Thank you to everyone who took the time to stop by our blog and cast your vote for your favorite pumpkin this year. We had a great response and it was a very tight race.

No, I’m just kidding it wasn’t even close. The pumpkin that won this year pretty much blew all the others out of the water as the overwhelming favorite.

The 2015 Pumpkin Carving Contest Winning Pumpkin is…

Pumpkin #2 // Grumpy Minion

Which was carved by….

Brent!

Congratulations Brent you win bragging rights for the year (but don’t let it go to your head). Second place went to Doc Brown carved by my dad and third place went to Darth Vader carved by my brother. My hipster cat pumpkin and my mom’s Linus pumpkin followed behind.

Thanks again to everyone who participated in our family pumpkin carving contest. It was really fun and we can’t wait to do it again next year.

I mentioned a few posts ago that my (Courtney) family takes pumpkin carving very seriously. We are a family that enjoys making a friendly competition out of just about anything. Thus, eight years ago this fun little pumpkin carving contest was born.

Each year we look forward to gathering together, picking out pumpkins and spending a fall afternoon outside together drinking apple cider and carving.

We share photos of our creations and invite our friends and family to vote for their favorite. That is when the competition (and trash talking) begins. The carver with the pumpkin that gets the most votes wins bragging rights. It has become a fun family tradition that we look forward to every year.

We have been polling the opinions of our extended family and close friends for years but since starting the blog we have made so many great friends and have such supportive readers that we thought it would be fun to get your thoughts too! Thank you for taking the time to participate in our fun!

Browse through the entries below and the scroll to the bottom to cast your vote. (voting for this year is now over)

2015 Pumpkin Carving Contest Entries:

Pumpkin #1 // Doc Brown

Pumpkin #2 // Grumpy Minion

Pumpkin #3 // Linus

Pumpkin #4 // Hipster Cat

Pumpkin #5 // Darth Vader