Dont Should on Me

Week One

_{Bookcases from @mygrandparentschair}

Intro

If you’re not familiar with the #oneroomchallenge, let me fill you in. It’s a community of folks who meet up online twice per year (Spring and Fall) for a fun, inspiring 8 week challenge to redesign a room. There’s really no “winner” because at the end we’ve all been pushed to create and execute a design plan for an entire room or space. I’ve never done anything like this before so it will certainly be interesting. Each week I’ll post our progress and I encourage you to follow along on my Instagram stories for the nitty gritty as well as check out my weekly blog posts for more in depth information. And don’t forget to check out what the other participants are up to, there are some really talented people out there!!

Without further ado, here’s my mood board, in all its not-so-fancy-but-if-I-wait-for-perfection-it-won’t-happen glory. And I’m going to be up-front with you: this isn’t the final plan. It’s just not in the budget to buy new chairs and add the doors we want right now, we just finished a HUGE kitchen renovation (you can find those on my IG account, blogging doesn’t come easy for me so bear with me). So, all that said, we’re going to be working on this office!

As any good DIYer knows, you’re supposed to take lots and lots of before pictures. But I never said I was a good DIYer – HA! I think I have two pictures of this room — oops. Just trust me when I tell you it is literally a box with 3.25 walls. Wait, partial walls? What are you even talking about?

The office is immediately off the front entry of our home and across from our dining room. We don’t ever really use the front entry – only unexpected visitors come to the front door. The opening into the room is enormous (hence the 3.25 walls), making it not very functional as an office, or any other room, really. The room has no overhead lighting at all and gets full morning sun through two very tall arched windows that are currently naked.

^{You can see in these listing photos what I mean about the wide opening into the room.}

Let’s dive in a bit more into the design!

Function:

To know me is to know that I put function first, always. And I know this is not typical of a designer — I’m not a designer 🙂 We live here, not on the pages of a magazine, so our home will ALWAYS be functional for us. That said, here’s how we wanted this room to function for us: an office with a desk and some bookcases or other hidden storage for ugly office function things like a printer, paper shredder, files, etc.; music room for Husband’s guitar and space to hang guitars on the wall; alternative lounge space since our living room is the only room conducive to this; and the potential to use the space as an additional guest room if needed.

That’s a lot of function to pack into one room! Here’s how I plan to tackle it: arched bookcases, a built-in arched desk between the two bookcases using file cabinets on either side as the base of the desk, and a floating credenza. My original inspiration for the arched bookcases came from Tamara over at @mygrandparentschair and she has a whole tutorial on her YouTube channel if you want to hack some IKEA bookcases like she did! Husband suggested that he build base cabinets and then put the arched bookcases on top and I think it’s going to be a great solution!

Design

With function addressed, I needed to think about how I wanted this room to FEEL. And since Husband was going to be using this room for his office, I really wanted to incorporate how he wanted the room to feel. We don’t really like talking about our feelings so this was a bit of a stretch but here’s what we came up with: quiet, calm, peaceful, moody, cozy. I’ve found I’m drawn to moody spaces so I decided to lean into it. I fell in love with a floral wallpaper from House of Hackney that I wanted to really be the focal point behind the built ins. Since the office is a multi-use space, I wanted to keep it from feeling too feminine so I selected a plaid rug, and more straight lines to finish the cabinetry and credenza. I still haven’t decided on hardware but I don’t want to rush so I’m just waiting.

Lighting is always tricky for me — I hate paying a lot for stuff but I’m realizing that sometimes you’ve just got to splurge on a few key pieces. Now, don’t get confused, my definition of “splurge” is still quite conservative, haha. I found the overhead pendant on sale and while it wasn’t my first choice, I actually think it’s going to be a great option to counter balance the feminine wallpaper and I’m hoping the light casts out of it in a pretty pattern on the ceiling. One thing I haven’t seen a lot of in any of the designs I was seeing on social media is a hanging pendant over a desk so I’m pumped to include this beautiful cut glass pendant over the desk – I think it’s going to kick up the style in this room SO much!

Challenges

One thing I already know is going to give me a hard time is the loss of symmetry at the windows when we add the built-ins. My original vision had either black or taupe velvet curtains – so luxe and helps with sound dampening. However, I think that by the time we build in the bookcases next to the window there isn’t going to be enough room between the front edge of the bookcase and the window frame. So — I’m trying to let go of my emotional attachment to the curtains and wrap my head around some sort of shade option. The arch of the windows also presents a bit of a challenge but I think the arch is just going to get covered up by whatever window coverings we decide on – it will be ok because we’re adding arches with the bookcases.

Budget. Oh boy. So, I can already tell you that this is a phase one type makeover. Eventually I’d like to get some swivel chairs for the room that could also be used in other rooms in our home for the few occasions we need additional seating. But at almost $1000 a pop, we’re definitely waiting on that purchase and going to use the chairs we currently have. The other big expense we’re waiting on is doors. When we originally purchased our home we envisioned large glass doors here to preserve the open feel but the more we live here and think about the function of the room, the more we think we need to make the entry into the room a little bit smaller so the room feels a little more cozy and having a bit more wall space will allow us a bit more flexibility in layout. I think we’ll still do glass doors eventually but they’ll need to be custom ($$$) so again, that project will have to wait.

WHEW! That’s a long post so I’ll wrap it up for now but stay tuned because I think this is gonna be a wild ride as we figure out how to build our own built-ins with arches, inset doors, and a floating credenza.

Remember, don’t forget to go check out the other guest participants in this Spring 2023 One Room Challenge^(R) here — I have a feeling it’s gonna be fun!

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You can check out guest participant rooms on Apartment Therapy’s posts and pages too! #ORCAT