Office Renovation

Happy Wednesday!!!

So, my second renovation project is now complete! I renovated a beautiful home office. My idea for this space was to create a place for my boyfriend and I to work from home, so I knew I wanted it to be a kind of manly office, but still work for both of us. Therefore, I landed on the design style of farmhouse industrial. So basically, I used a lot of wood and wire accents, and darker tones such as tans, browns, blacks, etc. The room has a lot of natural light though so I wanted to use a few white pieces to help brighten it up even more. 

Here are some before photos of the room:

The room was really cluttered, so it's almost hard to tell what's really going on in here. This room was basically just used as an extra storage space, so it was a mess. The walls were a bright yellow color and the trim was white, but it needed re-painted. The last picture is the wall that took me the longest. It had a layer of dry-erase paint applied to it over spots that were patched really badly. So not only did I have to remove all the paint by hand, which took weeks, I had to be careful not to create more holes in the wall because the wall itself was super unstable. Tip: Don't ever use dry-erase paint!!!!!

Before I talk about everything else I did, here are the after pictures:

So the first step after removing that nasty dry-erase paint was to patch, sand, and paint that wall & all the others. I really loved the paint color I used in the other bedroom of this house (check out my other blog post), and since this house will be on the market eventually, I figured it was smart to use a neutral, matching colors in the two rooms for buyers to work with. Then I repainted all the window trim a new, brighter white. 

As far as decorating this room, I knew I wanted to keep it semi-industrial so I bought this great wire rolling shelf to go behind the desk: 

It was the perfect blend of farmhouse and industrial because it had the black wire pattern but it also had wooden shelves. Above that piece I just had some cute photo frames with inspirational quotes and a letter holder

You'll notice a "travel" sort of pattern in the room, which I sort of came to naturally without planning it. But this bicycle quote matches that pattern. 

On the window sill behind the desk it was most logical to put the printer, since it would be close-hand if we were sitting at the desk working.

Here I just added a stack of books on one side with a stapler on top: something simple. Then I put a hanging pot on the window just to add some green in later on. 

On the other side of the desk I hung some more decorative pieces to balance out the three on the other side.

I thought the circular mirror piece was cool because it had an industrial kind of feel to it with the metal, so I balanced it by adding the wooden quote underneath. The canvas painting was actually painted by my boyfriend and I just thought the colors balanced well with the whole room (tan, black, etc).

My absolute favorite part of this room is the bookshelf.

The bookshelf has a good blend of farmhouse-industrial again, with black metal and wooden shelves. Staging bookshelves are always fun for me and it's easy to do because you don't need much. DON'T overload the shelves: keep it simple and don't add many books. Also- if you want to use the style I did to create a balance, it's easy. Basically I tried to balance in a pyramid pattern, so every other shelf, on the opposite side, has a similar design piece. So for example, the books are always on the opposite side as the shelf above. And the wooden letter bookends are on opposite ends as well. Same as the candles and the plants. When staging bookshelves, always use older books with cool bindings and not any kind of crazy, bright, distracting colors. Also, instead of having to buy multiple bookends, you can always stack books on their sides and use them to hold the others up, which I did a lot. Adding plants and greenery almost EVERYWHERE in a room is so important. I like to add at least 3-4 plants, but this room only had two because I do not have a green thumb and I kill everything 😂 Did you notice the travel theme again?

I have a lot of bicycle wheels in this room if you can try to spot them all :)

So an office isn't really an office without the most important part: the desk!

I kept it simple here: of course I had to use a black desk because all my other furniture in this room is either black or wooden so it wouldn't have looked right to me with any other color. All I added here was a small industrial-looking lamp, a pencil holder, and a wooden letter holder with ANOTHER BICYCLE WHEEL! I really loved pieces with those on them.

Behind the desk on the other wall I just added a keyboard and a guitar for some more serene touches (plus this keyboard won't fit anywhere else). And then I added a chair again because every office needs a nicer, relaxing place to sit. 

Now last but not least, was that ugly, ugly, dry-erase paint wall. SO basically it came out looking a lot better than it had in the before picture, but because of how weak the structure of the wall was, even after patching the holes, the owners decided not to paint this wall but just to cover it up in a creative way until they had the money to either take it down or replace the drywall. So I thought at first I could use a cool wallpaper as a statement wall but because the wall couldn't be sanded down to be perfectly flat, I knew it wouldn't adhere very well. So instead, I found this awesome map tapestry to fit in with my "explore/travel" theme. It fit the wall perfectly to cover the bad spots and the colors worked well because it has this "sepia" color scheme which matches all the tans, browns, wood, and black elements in the room. 

In front of the tapestry I added this cute, old wooden stand and a whiskey decanter with some glasses because who doesn't need a drink while they work sometimes?!

So that's about it! The easiest thing you can do to renovate any room is to clean out clutter! Big and multiple pieces of furniture always make a room feel smaller and more cramped so keep it simple! When it comes to a home office, you definitely don't want clutter because how can you work in a cramped, dirty space? Overall, I'm happy with how it turned out and I hope you all like it! If anyone wants any design tips on your own home office, let me know! 

Hope you all stay tuned for my next renovation project- a farmhouse bathroom :)

~Yogi Renovator 

Here's a complete list of all the pieces in this room if you're interested:

Photo 1:

-Desk: Auction/Yard sale piece

-Chair: Staples

Photo 2:

-Chair: Bought at Goodwill (originally from Target)

-Clock: Home Goods

-Candle on keyboard: Big Lots

-Pillows: Goodwill

Photo 3:

-Tapestry: Amazon

Photo 4:

-Black/Wooden rolling shelf: Home Goods

-Small grey box on shelf: Home Goods

-Pencil Holder: Dollar Tree

Photo 5:

-Black photo frames: Big Lots

-Patterned letter holder: Home Goods

Photo 6:

-Hanging plant holder: Home Goods

-Printer: Staples

-Small white box: Homegoods

Photo 7:

-Black circular decorative piece: Home Goods

-Wooden Jane Austen quote: Home Goods

-Painting: Painted by my boyfriend, Alex, of Damien Rice

Photo 8:

-Bookshelf: Big Lots

-Wooden "S" and "A" bookends: Home Goods

-Plants: Lowes

-Candles:Home Goods

Photo 9/10:

-Gold "Explore" sign: Big Lots

-Metal/Copper basket: Big Lots

-Tiny Buddha: Dollar Tree

-Bicycle Fabric basket: Countryview Grocery

Photo 11:

-White pencil holder: Home Goods

-Industrial desk lamp: Home Goods

-Wooden letter holder: Home Goods

Photo 14:

-Whiskey decanter: Gift to my boyfriend

-Whiskey glasses: Hershey Country Club

-Wooden stand: Thrift store find