Crafts & DIY Home Improvement

Home Office Makeover

July 8, 2012

Putting together my home office/craft room has been on my to-do list for almost a year, and I promised myself before Chris and I celebrated our second anniversary in our “new” house, that it was one item that would be scratched off the list. After scouring the paint samples at both Home Depot and Lowe’s, I settled on the color “Celery.”

Surprisingly, it was one of the first colors I was drawn to nearly two years ago when we were choosing colors for the kitchen. At the time, I was having trouble deciding between “Asparagus” and “Celery” and had consoled myself with the thought that if I used the darker color (“Asparagus”) in the kitchen, I could use “Celery” for another room in the house.

I have to pause here in my makeover tale to laud my husband for being so accommodating when it comes to color in our home, as I definitely have a knack for picking colors not for the faint of heart. Our dining room is the color of the table you see pictured above, our bedroom is in the same color family although significantly lighter, and our kitchen as I’ve already mentioned is a deeper version of my recently refreshed home office.

And since I’ve already halted the chronological progression of this makeover, I’d also like to take a moment and thank my good friend Caroline over at Clumsy Crafty Happy for inspiring me to tackle this project by posting about her own recent studio makeover. Caroline used to work with me as a social media manager at the Dalton Agency, but is now working with her beau, Jason, over at IWearYourShirt.  If you enjoy crafting, I definitely recommend checking out her blog as she’s often posting about groovy DIY projects she’s working on or copycrafts anyone can enjoy.

All rambling aside, once the paint color was picked, the “makeover” was pretty straightforward. This room is the last unpainted canvas in the house, and with Chris and I both pitching in, it only took about an hour to prep, two hours to paint (including drying time between coats) and another thirty minutes or so to set back up. When we removed the outlet covers, I also took the opportunity to scrub and sand them so that I could spray paint them the metallic silver you see in the image above – an inexpensive way to embellish your outlet covers if you’d like to avoid spending the upwards of $7 a piece on actual metal covers.

I’m pretty excited about having a room to in which to both work (write) and play (craft). One of my annual traditions for the past three years has been participating in National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for those in the know), and the second phase of this project will be moving my computer desk and all its accoutrements back into the office. Another benefit of my home office is that it also provides me with a quiet(er) place in which to “social my media” on evenings and weekends, because as much as I love my husband, cranking out content calendars or working on reports is difficult to do when I’m also listening to fascinating cut scenes from his latest video game (this weekend it was Uncharted 3).

In terms of next steps, my drafting table and about half of my drawing, painting, crocheting, sewing and scrapbooking supplies have made it back into the office – although many of the aforementioned are hiding in the closet so I could get a decent picture. Next weekend’s tasks will be to put the closet into some reasonable semblance of order (a task that I’m very much dreading), and working to get some artwork up on the walls as they’re looking pretty sparse.

Sorry for not having any “before” shots to feature, but this room was a hot mess, and I didn’t feel like showcasing my cluttered side to the interwebs. Stay tuned for Part Two!

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