Planning Our Home Office

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.