home office renovation – simplify the chaos

One Room Challenge Week Six: Our Home Office REVEAL!

It’s the final week of the Fall 2020 One Room Challenge! We’ve been pouring our heart and soul into our home office and I’m so excited to show you how it turned out!

Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane, shall we? Two months ago, the room looked like this:

Fluorescent light, barely functional window shades, mismatched storage – yikes. It was a hot mess combination of storage/overflow/office/extra guest bedroom and unfortunately due to the French doors, we saw the room every. single. day. Since the day we moved in, I’ve been dreaming of this being a cozy home office + library and it makes me so happy to see this vision come to life!

After removing all the old trim and beadboard paneling, Justin and I took primed shiplap and ran the planks vertically all around the room and on the ceiling. We put extra effort into making sure the ceiling planks lined up with the wall planks, and I think that effort was definitely worth it! I chose the color Treron by Farrow and Ball and had it color-matched at Lowe’s for all the walls, ceiling, trim, and built-ins.

The olive green color strikes just the right balance for me – not too dark, not too light, not too brown, not too green. It’s a bit of a chameleon color and changes a little depending on the lighting but it’s just a nice warm that makes the room feel so cozy.

Without a doubt, the star of the room is the gorgeous built-in. This showstopper took the room from no storage to tons of storage. The bottom portion is Ikea cabinets with Semihandmade doors and I love them so much. They look custom-made but for a fraction of the price! If you’ve been following along in my Instagram stories, you know that I had two different options for hardware but didn’t feel like either was quite right so I ordered a third set. I’m still waiting on those cabinet pulls and knobs to arrive and I think they’ll be the perfect finishing touch. Stay tuned!

Back in the planning stages, I debated on whether to do a built-in desk or keep it freestanding, then whether to do all cabinet doors or have a section of drawers as well. I’m so happy with my decision to do a freestanding desk and include a section of drawers in the middle. It provides tons of easily accessible and functional storage and with the desk in the middle, the room actually feels perfectly proportioned.

Justin and I worked together to build the bookshelves from scratch and we are both thrilled with how well they turned out. I intentionally tried to pull in other colors and textures throughout the bookshelves, especially with light colors and natural fibers to break up all the olive green throughout the room. In addition to all our books, the shelves are filled with special mementos, heirlooms, family pictures, and artwork from travels, so it very much feels like us.

I also have functional items throughout – closed storage boxes holding office supplies, decorative jars filled with pens and pencils, trays for papers, etc. The shelves strike the perfect blend of meaningful, beautiful, and functional for us.

I think of this room as a home office and library all in one. As I imagined shelves full of books, I also imagined a cozy area to read them in. The bay window area provided the ideal place to add a comfy reading chair. I had been on the hunt for a reading chair in either yellow/gold, rust, burgundy, or something along those lines but everything I found was super expensive. Then a few weeks ago, I saw someone share a post from the thrift store in my hometown. One of the items pictured was a set of vintage yellow chairs circa 1970s (sold separately for $50 each) and my heart immediately leapt. I sent my mom on a mission to the thrift store to see if the chairs were comfortable and in good shape. They were, and I convinced her to buy one for me for Christmas. Score! Here’s the chair when it first arrived – my parents thought I was crazy, but I knew it had potential.

If you follow me on Instagram, you know I performed a little cosmetic surgery on the chair to remove the flap of fabric at the bottom and this made a huge impact in making it seem more modern.

I brought down the little side table from Vi’s room, but I eventually plan to replace it with something else (I’m feeling a little round table?) and I’ll also add a floor lamp at some point. For now, I’m happy with this space!

In addition to replacing the baseboards, we also tore off the old window casing and added new trim in a style inspired by Jenni Yolo at ISpyDIY. I also painted the existing window frames and grille inserts Tricorn Black by Sherwin Williams.

We had a slight fiasco with the bay window curtain rod because we didn’t realize that the side bars only extended 36″ max and we needed about 42″ but Justin came up with the brilliant idea to buy two cheap telescoping curtain rods and screw them into the angled attachment on the middle window’s curtain rod. This worked like a charm! The curtains are Ikea Ritva. I got them in 118″ length and then used hemming tape to shorten them a bit (I like a little pool at the bottom, but it was originally like 8″ too long). I hung them by attaching pleating hooks to the curtains and then hooking them through the eyelets of curtain rings. Rather than just putting the curtain rod through the loops of the curtain, this gave them a little extra oomph.

Another issue I ran into was rug size. Because of the bay window and angled doorway, the room is anything from square (don’t even get me started on how hard figuring out the crown molding was!). It left an awkward amount of floor space that I really needed a 6×9 rug for, but many of the rugs I loved only came in 5×7’6″ or 7’6″x9’6″. It was a frustrating search! Finally, I decided to try a layered rug look with a simple jute rug at the 6×9 size I needed and a patterned rug I loved in a 5×7’6″ size on top. This solution ended up working so well and I think it helps give the room a casual and cozy feel.

I am so so happy with how this room turned out! It is the room I was most excited about when we first moved in and it is now without question my favorite room in the house.

And it wouldn’t be a reveal without a few final before-and-afters, right?

I had so much fun participating in the Fall One Room Challenge! You can check out all the other fun projects that happened here.

And if you missed any of my previous posts on this challenge, you can check them out here:

Week One: The Office Plans

Week Two: The DIY Built-ins!

Week Three: Halfway Point Progress

Week Four: All About Shiplap

Week Five: Cabinet Doors Installed

Sources

Note: Some of these product links are to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This means if you purchase something through the Amazon link I provided, I may earn a small commission. None of my recommendations or decisions are based on any commission I might receive from your purchases, they are all things I actually bought for this renovation. The decision to buy something is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy one through the link I provide is completely up to you. Thank you!

Paint Color: Treron by Farrow and Ball (colormatched at Lowe’s) in Eggshell finish (walls + ceiling) and Satin finish (trim + built-ins).

Window Color: Tricorn Black by Sherwin Williams in Satin

Base Cabinets: Ikea

Door and Drawer Fronts: Semihandmade DIY Shaker

Sputnik Chandelier

Chandelier Lightbulbs

Shiplap

Baseboards

Crown Molding

Curtain Rod (keep in mind, we changed out the side window rods with a longer telescoping curtain rod!)

5’x7’6″ Patterned Rug

6’x9′ Jute Rug

Desk

Desk Chair is old – this one is similar

Black and White Butterfly Print

Letterfolk Board

Stackable Black Paper Trays

White Storage Box

Almost everything else in the room is thrifted, heirloom, or bought a long time ago.

One Room Challenge Week Five: Cabinet Doors are on!

It’s the second-to-last week of the One Room Challenge and now that all the shiplap is finished, things have really picked up!

One thing that got checked off the list this past week was the completion of the window trim. We had trimmed out each window with a 1×4 and Justin then ripped a board into 1/2 inch strips and nailed it around the edges. This helped hide any gaps left in between the shiplap and the 1×4 and gave everything a nice, finished look.

Other than that, the biggest change that has happened this week has been the addition of our cabinet doors!

When we first started planning out the built-ins, we contemplated DIYing cabinet doors. I’m so glad that we ultimately decided to outsource that project because these Semihandmade door and drawer fronts are perfect and were a breeze to paint and install!

Semihandmade is a company that makes different styles of door and drawer fronts that are fit to the same specifications as an Ikea cabinet door. This means you can purchase the Ikea base cabinet, which is a very inexpensive, and then add different doors to create a more custom look. I’m really impressed with how it elevates the look of the cabinets without breaking the bank!

You can order doors in various colors but I went for the unpainted DIY version so I could paint them the exact same color as the rest of the built-in: Treron by Farrow and Ball that I color-matched at Lowe’s. Before painting, I did rub a fresh tack cloth over the fronts and backs of all the doors, because they shipped from the factory covered in a fine layer of sawdust.

I placed each door face down on top of paint cans (so they would be elevated off the ground) and started painting all the backs. I highly, highly recommend painting the backs first so that when you flip them to paint the other side, the back is the painted side that touches the paint cans – if one side is going to get nicked or scratched or stuck after painting, you definitely want it to be the side that rarely gets seen!

(Apologies for the quality and angles of these pictures – I didn’t take photos of this process so these are just screen grabs from the timelapse videos I posted on Instagram).

I used a paint + primer so I did not do a separate layer of primer. I used an angled brush to trim out the edges of each inset . . .

. . . and then I used this six inch foam roller on the rest of the doors to create a really smooth finish.

I painted all the backs of the doors, waited about 3 hours, and then painted a second coat. I let them dry overnight and then flipped them over to paint the fronts. I did the exact same process of two coats, this time also rolling the door sides, and let them dry again overnight. The next morning (probably about 18 hours later), we attached them to the cabinets using the hardware we bought from Ikea. They were very simple to install!

Yesterday, I spent time in the afternoon playing around with arranging the shelves. I’m definitely not done with them, but it was fun to get started with different placements. As you can see, we still need to finish assembling the drawers in the middle, but so far, I’m really pleased with the look!

Other things we need to accomplish this week:

-add the final trim pieces around the door frame

-add thin piece of trim between cabinets and the wall

-paint + install crown molding

-paint + install baseboards

-install cabinet hardware

-paint countertop (while I like the natural wood look, up close it looks silly because we had to use two boards to achieve the length and it’s just too obvious to leave natural)

-paint outlet covers and duct vent to match wall color

-paint the inside of the window frames

-install curtain rod + hang curtains

-move in the rugs, desk, chair, and finishing touches!

Can we get all this done in one week? We’ll see! In the meantime, you can check out all the other guest participants in the One Room Challenge here.

One Room Challenge Week Three: Slow and Steady Progress

We’re another week in to the Fall One Room Challenge and since last week’s update a LOT has happened! And yet, nothing has been finished.

We are very much in the messy middle of this project and if I’m being honest, it feels a little frustrating to not be able to check anything off our list. Our cabinet doors arrived and they are so pretty! But they’re still not painted or attached to the cabinet. We took our ugly fluorescent light down and our new fixture arrived! But it’s not installed yet so we just have wires hanging from the ceiling. We’ve started the window and door trim and I’m loving the new look! But we still need a couple final pieces of trim to complete each one. So many things are in progress and nothing is fully complete, but it feels like we’re nearly to the top of a steep hill and once we get there, we can roll down and everything will pick up speed.

The thing we really need to do in order to reach that hill top is finish all the planking. So much is waiting on that: installing the ceiling fixture, crown molding, window and door trim, baseboards, painting, etc. The planking needs to be done first before we can tackle anything else.

The reason this step is taking so long is because we’re covering all the walls and the ceiling and there’s a lot of measuring and troubleshooting involved. None of our walls are square, we have a bay window, and there are so many tricky little cuts involved.

Just look at the photo below. Between the three windows + trim and the bay window + all the angles on the wall and ceiling, you can see its a lot of precise measuring and cutting with each board used. We’re cutting out notches, figuring out angles, finagling wonky corners – it’s a time-consuming, meticulous process.

It’s also not really a one-person process. The walls are one thing, but the ceiling is absolutely a two person job. We’re using 12 foot planks and there’s just no way for one person to be able to hold the plank in place and nail everything at the same time. So I not only need Justin to be home to keep making progress, but we need our kids to be napping or have someone else watch them in order to work. Needless to say, we’re working with small, inconsistent windows of time to get things done.

This weekend, LJ is going to visit my parents so we’ll have some extra time when Vi’s napping to hopefully finish out the rest of this planking. From there, progress is really going to pick up so I have a feeling that next week’s check-in is going to be full of finished updates! I can’t wait!

Make sure to stop by the One Room Challenge blog to check out all the other projects in progress!

One Room Challenge Week Two: Our DIY Built-ins!

Another week has come and gone in the Fall 2020 One Room Challenge and buckle up because today is a doozy of a post: it’s all about our DIY built-ins!

I went back and forth several times with whether to have the desk as a standalone piece of furniture or incorporate it into the built-ins. After mapping out both options with painters tape and placeholder furniture, I decided to go with a full wall of built-ins and a standalone desk to maximize storage.

We started out with base cabinets from Ikea. We went to their kitchen center and one of their employees drew out our plans using software. The software made it so easy to visualize and it was nice to play around with a few different combinations! We settled on four 30″ cabinets with doors and one 15″ cabinet with four drawers to go in the center.

The first step when we got home was ripping out all the beadboard (demo is so satisfying!) and trim. We were not concerned about the residual glue on the wall because we knew it would all be covered up eventually.

I assembled all the cabinets and arranged them in order. My grandpa also came over one day and helped us by moving the electrical outlet in the center of the back wall up a few feet so it would be accessible above the cabinets. Justin attached the cabinet legs and adjusted everything to the correct height. Our purchase from Ikea included a metal railing to attach to the wall and then hook the cabinets directly onto for extra stability. Justin put a lot of work into all those details to make sure the cabinets were level and sturdy!

He also used a jigsaw to cut out a hole in the far left cabinet so that it would be accessible to hook up our printer. Other than the outlet that my grandfather moved, this was the only outlet behind the cabinets so I’m thankful we can still use it!

Once everything was fastened in place, we attached vertical paneling along the walls around the cabinets (today’s post is long enough – I’ll cover this step in more detail in a future post!) and were ready to tackle our biggest DIY yet – the bookshelves!

Our first step was installing a countertop. Butcherblock would have been an easy choice, but it would have also been an expensive choice so we decided to use this edge-glued pine panel instead (making the countertops less than $70 instead of over $300). The option Lowe’s had in store was not quite deep enough, so Justin measured the extra depth we needed and cut a long thin board to match that size exactly. We screwed that board into place against the wall using the metal rails on the Ikea cabinet underneath.

We then used a kreg jig to create screw holes in the bottom of the large panel so we could screw the panel to the long, thin board, creating a deeper counter. We also used screws to attach the front of the panel to the Ikea cabinets, again using the cabinet’s metal rails.

After all this work, we discovered Menard’s had a similar panel that would have been deep enough and saved us all the extra trouble creating and attaching the back piece. Live and learn: always shop around!

The countertop was nearly twelve feet long and there was no way to finagle two six foot pieces so the seam would be hidden underneath a bookshelf support, so Justin used a circular saw to cut two panels to length to meet in the middle.

We used a flat bracket underneath to create stability at the seam between panels. This picture below gives you a good idea of how everything was connected: metal railings to attach counters to cabinets, kreg jig screws to attach the panel to the extra back board, and a flat bracket to attach the two panels to one another.

Since there’s going to be quite a bit of weight on the bookshelves, we also created extra support by screwing metal L brackets to the cabinets and counters.

Once the top was f.i.n.a.l.l.y. in place and as sturdy as possible, we sanded it down so the back board was as flush with the rest of the panel as possible. Then we started on the vertical supports. Justin took 1 x 12 boards and cut them to length, then we used the kreg jig to create three screw holes in the sides. We measured the placement of these holes strategically so that they would be hidden underneath the eventual shelves.

After triple checking that each board was square to the wall and as level as possible, we screwed the boards directly into the wall.

This step involved LOTS of precision and measuring, because we want each vertical support to line up with the line of the cabinet doors (which are ordered and hopefully shipping soon!)

It was finally time for the shelves! We measured and marked (and triple checked) where each shelf was going to go. Justin used scrap oak boards from our garage to cut down thin support pieces. We used premium interior wood screws to attach these pieces to the side boards and back wall where each shelf was going to go. This step was tedious because we had to make sure each and every board was level and in the correct spot so our shelves would all eventually look symmetrical!

Once all the supports were in place and we had checked to make sure everything was level, Justin took 1 x 12 boards and cut them all down to the correct shelf length.

We used a nail gun to nail each shelf into the support pieces. Because the shelves were so long (the only way we could make things look symmetrical), Justin cut extra scrap support pieces and used a kreg jig to attach them to the middle of each shelf.

Next, Justin took very thin plywood and cut it to the same size as each shelf. Using a nail gun, we attached this plywood to the bottom of each shelf so all the support pieces were hidden.

We used scrap pieces of wood to tuck in between the top board and the plywood to correct any bowing so everything looked nice and level.

Then it time to trim out the shelves. Justin took 1×2 primed boards and cut everything to the correct length. He used a nail gun to attach these trim pieces to all the vertical boards first, then went through and cut all the shelf trim pieces to length and nail to the front.

I used plastic wood to fill in all the nail holes and sand them smooth so they’re ready for painting

The end result was that each shelf looks like one nice, thick board. I’m so thrilled with how they turned out!

Justin used his table saw to rip down the scrap pieces of baseboard that we tore out of the room to create thin trim pieces to hide the gap between the vertical panel and top of the wall. Now the only thing we have left to do is install crown molding across the top and the cabinet doors when they arrive (hopefully within the next week or two) and it will be time to PAINT!

I’m so so proud of all our hard work with this project. It was the largest scale DIY we’ve ever attempted and it came with a ton of meticulous measuring, working with wonky walls, and problem solving. But we did it and I love it so much!

Check back in next Thursday to see our continued progress on this room! In the meantime, you can see all other ORC participants here.

Fall 2020 One Room Challenge Week One: My Dreamy Office Plans!

I am so excited for another round of the One Room Challenge!

After tackling our basement kitchen renovation in the spring challenge, I was inspired to choose another space to renovate for the fall challenge. If you’ve been following me on Instagram lately, you know I’ve chosen to renovate our home office and make it the dreamy office + library of my dreams.

Here’s where we started at the beginning of this challenge:

One Room Challenge Home Office Renovation

When we first moved in, this was one of the rooms I was most excited about. From the first moment I saw it, I knew that this could be a special room. First of all, I think the French doors (which aren’t really pictured but you can see a bit of them in the first image) set the stage for a dramatic space. My heart was immediately invested in the idea of built-in storage along the far wall and I could picture this being a warm and cozy space to work on a computer or relax and curl up with a good book. Unfortunately, this room was not high on our priority list so for the first year (yes, year!) of living here it looked more or less like this:

I joked that this was our “Room of Requirement” (Harry Potter anyone?) because it had all the unpacked boxes from our move. All the extra stuff that we didn’t need yet was stored here and whenever I needed to find something random, this was usually where I found it. It was a hot mess of a room and didn’t get fully unpacked until July (14 months after moving in). Throughout that time it rarely ever got used as an office – I would typically just work in the less-cluttered kitchen – but it did sometimes double up as an overflow guest room. The picture below shows how last fall, my in-laws stayed in here because our guest room was mid-renovation AND a couch from our living room had to get moved in as well because of our Christmas tree in the living room. All our boxes were shoved either behind the couch or under the desk on the left side of the room. Suffice to say, this room has been a workhorse for us.

Now that we’ve tackled a few of the more pressing needs in our house, it felt like the right time to address this room and I can barely contain my excitement! My goal to create storage with the built-in cabinets + bookcases while still allowing plenty of room for a desk and office chair. I’m also hoping to create a cozy reading space tucked in the bay window area.

The Plans

This is the largest-scale DIY room renovation that Justin and I have ever tackled on our own. Justin was admittedly nervous that my plans would be too difficult to actually implement ourselves (in all fairness, I do tend to make things sound like they’ll be easier to do than they actually are haha) but so far we’re cautiously optimistic about completing this project! Our to-do list includes:

-remove all existing beadboard

-DIY built-in storage along the back wall with closed cabinets on the bottom and open bookshelves on top

-install vertical planks from floor to ceiling on all walls (and hopefully the ceiling too!)

-replace window and door trim

-replace baseboards

-add crown molding

-PAINT!

-replace light fixture (that fluorescent one has got to GO)

-finishing touches: curtains, cozy seating, all the fun stuff!

We’ve already ripped out all the beadboard and the built-ins are underway! If you follow me on Instagram (@simplifythechaos) you can see all the progress there. We just finished all the trimming out and plan to fill all the nail holes this week. I’ll share all the details on the DIY built-ins next Thursday! For now I’ll leave you with this little sneak peek:

I’m SO excited to transform this space into the office + library of my dreams. Check back here on Thursdays to watch the progress unfold! 🙂 In the meantime, you can check out all the other ORC participants and their chosen rooms here.