Home Office Makeover

We’ve been in our new home for around 7 weeks now and although I feel much more settled and relaxed in general I have not been able to fully get back into work mode.

It’s been driving me mad because I want to get on with stuff but I was really struggling to get into the right frame of mind to be able to fully concentrate. Thankfully I finally worked out what the issue was this past weekend – it was my office!

The room I’m using as my office was the only room in the house that hadn’t been decorated before we moved in. It was a fairly neutral greyish blue colour and apart from some scuff marks on the walls and it lacking curtains/blinds it seemed fine to use.

I’d muddled along with it as best I could but it got to a point the other week where I realised that I really didn’t like spending time in there. The lighting was odd, the colour was cold and along with the layout of the furniture it felt very claustrophobic.

I am NOT a fan of decorating but I decided enough was enough and set to work last weekend to start giving this room a makeover.

This house is just the right size to hold all of our stuff which is great but it’s literally JUST the right size, meaning I can’t empty a room out fully of its furniture to be able to decorate as there is no where for it to go, so I had to tackle this project in two halves.

First I had to move all of the furniture from one half of the office to the other side while still trying to leave myself room to be able to get in and out.

I then had to work in as methodical a way as possible around the room to avoid causing too much mess. I made dust sheets out of bin bags taped together with masking tape so that I could move them to different areas and spent the day trying to paint as quickly (and carefully) as possible.

By the end of the weekend, I had managed to finish all the painting on that side of the room, and Dean had put the blinds up for me. I’d also give the carpet on that side of the room a wash (I love my Vax carpet cleaner!) and had left the dehumidifier running in there overnight to make sure everything was nice and dry.

On Tuesday I was able to start moving furniture back over to that side of the room. I’m so glad to have my long work desk back as it makes craft tutorials much easier to work on, plus it gives me somewhere to store my heat presses.

The next phase of the decorating meant I had to move the other furniture into the space I’d just organised, but luckily I was able to get that half of the room fully painted and carpet cleaned by mid-afternoon and I had the dehumidifier on full blast all evening and overnight so that it dried out enough for me to be able to put everything back in its place by Thursday morning.

I spent the majority of Thursday dragging furniture around, filling drawers and shelves with my supplies and getting my plants settled into their new windowsill spots.

I got my computer set up on my sit/stand desk (the treadmill will be going back underneath in the next few days) and I’m waiting on some longer computer cables to turn up today so that I can get things all tidied away nicely under the desk. I also got my IKEA peg board on the wall, it’s a great place to store all of the bits that used to clutter up the desk and my SAD lamp ready to go incase we get some gloomy weather over the next few weeks.

I know a completely white room might not be everyone’s idea of calming but for me it’s the perfect colour. It makes the room much lighter which is ideal for when I need to take photos for craft tutorials, the space also feels bigger plus I can add my own pops of colour with the projects I’m planning to do over the next few months.