Home Decor, Organization

A New Year A New Look – Our Office Makeover Project

Today I’m excited to share with you some of the progress that we’ve made on my personal home office renovations. There’s just something about a new year that makes you want to get organized, am I right? So for us, that was the goal of this office makeover. Instead of papers, craft supplies and decor ideas floating around from one place to the next, we were determined to create and even build designated spots and storage for everything.

DIY office shelves - thehouseofsmiths_com
source

Like most of our home renovation or room makeover projects, we started by clearing out the space, entirely. Not only does this force you to organize all the items that used to once be there, but it also clears your mind to make room for ideas and possible new solutions for the space without having existing furniture and decor in the room clogging up your thoughts.

Office Before

Even though my office has a large window where natural light pours in, it’s in a basement, so it has low ceilings and originally started out with very dark paint. So first things first, we lightened up the room using a few of our favorite painting tools and techniques.
Repose Gray - Sherwin Williams - thehouseofsmiths office makeover

Next we designated out specific spots in the room to perform different functions. Even in a small space you can do this! A place to work, a spot to create and even an area to rest. The location that we chose to work on first was the creative space. For this we used some Ikea storage drawers, a little elbow grease and some innovative thinking to come up with a worktable and shelving storage unit that suited my creative needs perfectly!
2x4 grid platform

sanding table in office

Custom Shelf for office - thehouseofsmiths_com

I even dressed up a few plain storage boxes with tape and paint to fit my personal decor taste, for only a few dollars.

Stenciled Storage Box tutorial - thehouseofsmiths_com
stenciled storage boxes

The work area of my office is the space that we most recently finished. Since 90% of the time I’m writing for my job, I knew it would be important to have a place where I could gather lots of ideas. So with a beautiful frame, some cork board and fabric, I created a custom pin board that could finally house all of those decorating ideas for me, in a nice orderly fashion. It’s great for organizing, but it also serves as inspiration when I’m trying to think of new ideas.

DIY pin board - thehouseofsmiths_com

Office Makeover - The House of Smiths Blog (1)
fabric pin board

We still have a few finishing touches to work on before everything is totally done, but having a new look in my office for the new year feels SO great! It’s amazing what a coat of paint and implementing a couple of custom organizing projects into a space can really do for a room.

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