Our Home Office Makeover
Showing Off the Fruits of My Labour…
It’s been forever since I completed my home office makeover, it was, in fact, completed in April. However, this post got lost in the posting hiatus, but I’m finally here to show it off. I did reveal some DIYs that I completed for the home office makeover, but we need to have a full tour of the place I now call HQ. I recently showed off the final webisode of the makeover on my YouTube channel. It rounds off the rental reno series, every room in our rental home is now made over, with one or two rooms that need refreshers.
In giving you a tour of our home office makeover, we need to go back to the beginning. This room is classed as the second bedroom, but it’s up some pretty steep steps and would be impossible to get a wardrobe into the space. I had done one DIY as part of the makeover over a year ago, but due to a leak in the roof, we had to put it on pause.
This is where we found our before images…
The Before.
As you can see, she needed a lot of work. I was happy with where we got to with the faux walls to hide storage of our belongings, that was a lot of the hard work done. This next part of the makeover was simple.
The first was lighting. Both wall lights had never worked since we moved in, meaning the space was useless at night without a torch. I ended up fixing a pendent so there was more central light in the room and we worked out how the switches work. Turns out, you need the hallway light on in order for the home office light to work.
Once this was in place, it was time for paint. I ended up going with Farrow & Ball Old School White. As this room has a south-facing light, we needed that more blue-based white to make the space feel bright. This left us with a bank space for me to work with and building it into a space that would allow me to be productive, as well as a place to escape to.
The After.
If there was a room in our home that screamed coastal grandmother, it would be my home office. I really wanted to play with injecting some colour into our home. This faux built-in seemed like the perfect place to do so. It’s also ideal for displaying all my additional decor that I have no other home for.
The big question was where to place the desk. After going back and forth, I decided to place it off to the side. One side of the attic has a higher ceiling, so this felt like the best space to have it. The room is also limited with the number of plugs (vital for work) so it made sense. This left a large chunk of the room to play with. After it became obvious that a bed would not fit in the space (it blocked the entrance to our storage), I decided that having some seating would be perfect for a cosy place to relax and unwind.
This sofa is actually a Facebook Marketplace find for £40. Thanks to my friend lending me her car to pick it up and buying some new covers, it fitted perfectly next to the alcove. This sofa matches the one we have downstairs and my hope is when we buy a house we can bring them together with new covers so they match. I also found this vintage table at a charity store for a fiver, it’s the perfect size for a mini coffee table.
I love spending time in the home office. It’s my little sanctuary for my full-time job, but also for my content creation. I’m calling it AEL HQ, if I can kick out my husband who is slowly taking over the space. Especially since I got our old TV working with an Amazon Firestick. If the main TV is taken one of us is upstairs watching a series we’re addicted to. I appreciate that not everyone has a spare room for a home office. However, if you can, I would highly recommend it. Having your own space to create is heaven.