January 23, 2020

Sean’s Office Makeover

For Christmas, Sean asked for a redesigned home office. Can’t blame him – it had essentially turned into a room where furniture, papers, and electronics went to die. A glorified storage unit if you will. I hadn’t taken on a home project in a bit (more on that in another post) and so about two weeks before Christmas I decided I better get started or else I’m entering retail expedited-shipping-land. I threw together a plan real quick based on some images he had pinned on Pinterest, and I was off to the races. This image was the main source of inspiration.

Vibe: Edgy Industrial

Here’s what I was working with.

The room was underwhelming, but really didn’t need too much, honestly. Some fun paint and a faux brick wall were the elbow grease items to tackle first. I went with:

Ceiling: 1 gallon Swiss Coffee by Kelly Moore (my go-to white for ceiling, trim and sometimes walls)
Walls: 1 gallon Kendall Charcoal by Benjamin Moore (my daughter’s name. Easiest decision ever)
Wallpaper: Akea Faux Old Brick Wallpaper – from Amazon! (it had good reviews and cost $50 for two rolls. Done and done.)

This literally came together in about a week. The room isn’t that big so I was able to knock out the painting in about three days (two coats on everything) and the wallpaper was intermittently done over two days. Oh I also installed a ceiling light SAFELY. ALL. BY. MYSELF. Yet somehow managed to electrocute myself twice during the wallpaper install. Using a knife to push in the wallpaper around the outlets was a bad choice.

Light was from Wayfair and linked HERE.

For shelving I bought two sets of THESE iron pipe looking frames from Walmart. I liked that they could achieve the industrial look I was going for at a good price, and I could make them as wide or narrow as I wanted.

I may or may not have put about 60 holes in our walls to hang these… The good news is that the brackets are a standard wood width, so Chase and I went down to the lumber yard and got the nice gentleman there to simply cut our wood to length for us. I’m pretty sure his name was “Wolf.”

Chase – so in awe of Wolf and his wolf work.

I took the wood home and popped them onto the shelves. It was so easy and I think the wood cost like $60. Done.

So finally when it came to actually decorate the damn room I tried to stick to the theme while also making it personal. I was able to find an AUTHENTIC poster from the Pearl Jam concert I surprised Sean with for his 40th birthday in Chicago. I framed a black and white poster of San Francisco alongside another masculine poster I TOTALLY ripped off from another office I saw on Pinterest. Just keeping it real. And then – legit cool fun fact about my hubs – Sean has this INCREDIBLE vinyl collection. I used some of our favorite records to decorate between the shelves behind the desk. (Note: Sean later changed these out. Apparently the junk on the Sticky Fingers album cover was deemed NSFW.)

We needed a couch for the room, and while we had a desk chair that belonged to Sean’s grandfather and has sentimental value, it is less than comfortable. I found a great couch and desk chair – on Wayfair of course!

Finally I spied THESE legit sconces at a plant nursery of all places and NEEEEEDED them.