Home Office Makeover Before and After

Reusing the same furniture in a new way for a bigger impact!

Hey there! I’m happy to finally share with you my home office makeover, before and after photos included! It’s been an exciting couple of weeks in my house while the home office studio got emptied, organized, and redesigned. But it was all worth it. And it was done in under 6 weeks! Woop woop!

That was only due to the fact that I signed up for my home office makeover as a guest participant for the One Room Challenge, for who Better Homes and Garden is a media sponsor. This is a great annual challenge for designers to complete a full renovation in a room, any room, in 6 weeks. You can check out the other awesome reveals by the Featured Designers and the Guest Participants by clicking those titles. Thanks for having this challenge again this year!

The goal with this renovation was to reuse and repurpose as much as I could that was already in the office or around the house. You don’t have to go out and buy all new furniture and art in order to makeover a room. Sometimes a layout change and reorganizing can make a world of difference. And you can sure see that with this office. There were a few things that I purchased new, and I will list those for you in case you can’t pick them out. But the list is small.

Home Office Before

Here is the before shot:

It was not very functional, and definitely an eye sore. The office felt cramped, cold, and hard to work in. It’s the first room in the basement and I always kept the door closed to hide it. I preferred to lug my supplies upstairs to the dining room to work instead of in the room where I stored everything.

There is a low bulkhead for the front of the room which limited how tall any furniture could be, and there’s a jut-in on the wall to the left. The shelving was the right depth for the wall, but left an awkward gap where I crammed a craft cart and plastic storage tower into.

On the right side was a bookcase tucked behind the door, where there’s a tight angled wall, then my drafting table was beside it. The poor drafting table ending up being a catch-all for papers and boxes instead of serving the actual purpose.

As you can tell from the back wall, boxes of craft supplies, business products, and scrapbooking materials were stacked there to try and keep the main walkway free. Nothing was really working well in this room. But there was so much potential for this 8×9 office.

The Process

The first thing I did was empty the room so I could really gauge the size and layout. Even just doing that made the room feel like it was taking a deep breath of fresh air.

While everything was out I gave it a good cleaning. Then I moved the main furniture around, specifically the heavy black shelving.

Wowser! That really opened up the room! Suddenly I was envisioning wall to wall workstation options on the left side. Initially, I had been planning to move a desk or table into the center of the room and turn the back wall with the window into a focal wall. Sometimes plans needs to change on the fly when a better solution appears.

My super handy husband, who was also eager for a new project, whipped together this workstation for me using pine board. And I love it! It fits snuggly into the wall niche and gives me so much dedicated work space. Then the ideas really started flowing together.

I started purging all of the items that were being stored in my home office. A hard, honest look at what I actually want to do in the room determined my crafting style and joys had changed from scrapbooking to diy and painting. It was time to let go of a lot of supplies that were collecting dust.

Finally, after a really long time of purging I could start organizing and decorating!

The only items I bought were:

• Area Rug from Wayfair

• Blush Paint from Canadian Tire

• Blush Canvas Organizing Totes from Amazon

• Sterilite Wide 3 Drawer Tower

• Command Hooks

• 1 Plank of Project Pine Board 24″ x 96″

That’s it! Everything else was reused or repurposed from around my home! I had an extra picture frame to put my Fibinacci Spiral art in. I used my own painting from a stack in the corner for the art above the drafting table. And there was a lot of storage containers, drawers, tins, and boxes sitting empty in this room, just waiting to be used.

And here is the reveal for you finally:

I love how the blush wall plays off the pink in the area rug. And it’s soft enough of a color to not be overwhelming against the blonde wood of the workstation.

Home Office Is Complete

What do you think of this transformation? Having a blush/rose-toned office has been a dream of mine for a few years. I’m so glad that I went ahead with it! This home office studio is a fun place to hang out and work now. The creative energy is strong, everything is easy to find, and there’s lots of room to work on an assortment of projects.

What’s your favorite part? Leave your answer in the comments!

Thanks for following along as my home office studio was given a makeover. The budget was low, and I’m proud of how much I was able to repurpose and reuse to keep this makeover fairly eco-friendly too. It goes to show that you don’t need to start from fresh in order to completely transform a room.

Has this inspired you to try restyling a room in your home? I’d love to hear about it!

Pin it! Home Office Makeover Before and After