I’m so excited to share my small home office makeover reveal. It’s been a slow transformation from dark little space, to cozy dark space, to catch all room with piles of ‘stuff’ everywhere, to light and bright, to functional small home office with a meeting space, and I couldn’t be happier!
My home office is my happy place. It’s where I work on sweetphi.com, and it’s where I love to come to get work done and have meetings. It’s my work from home blogging office. It’s my prop storage area. It’s my cookbook collection space. It’s my favorite room in our house.
When we moved into our house 3 years ago, we designated the front small space as my home office, and while the walls were a deep eggplant and did look nice, it felt very claustrophobic and dark. Because of the spacing of the room, we got a small corner desk so I was staring at a dark wall…not very inspirational!
There was also this big chair taking up a huge corner of the room, it just felt like there wasn’t any space!!
I recently put some fun removable wall paper in the corner by the props from Chasing Paper.
I wanted to have a meeting – work – space in my home office where I could have meetings with clients and coworkers, and I wanted to have the space feel like a place I wanted to be.
Just like when I did the twins and toddler shared room, I turned to Havenly for help. The designer was so awesome and literally when we move, I want to hire her to do every room in our house! She put some amazing concepts together (see mood board for my dream natural wood-leather-gold-black home office), but when it came down to it, I realized I just wasn’t ready to invest that kind of money (because we are hoping to move one of these days…three kids in a room is a little tight so we’ll have to figure out something soon…so a gorgeous $1000 desk that I really really am in love with…that’s going to have to wait until I am in an office that I know I’ll be for a while.)
The biggest difference to the space was the painting the walls. The color used was Agreeable Gray (just like when I shared our living room painting in this Catching Up With The Kelnhofers). Painting the walls opened up the space so much!
The other big purchase was the table and two chairs. I cannot tell you how much I love having that table and chairs, and have had so many meetings in here already.
On to my favorite part- links – below are all the links to the furnishings of this small home office (from left side of the room to right):
- Utility cart
- Cube shelf/cube shelf bins
- Corner desk
- Office chair (yes this chair ate a lot of my budget, but it’s one of the best investments ever, as I sit in it 8+ hrs a day)
- Book shelf (collapsible, and I’ve had this since college lol)
- Natural wood table with drop leaf extension
- Leather chairs
- Rug (vintage antique rugs here and cheaper vintage looking rugs on Amazon from this seller – example here)
- Large year wall calendar
Small home office makeover tips:
- decide how you want to use the space (work space/meeting space/storage space)
- decide on a general color palate/feel (I wanted light walls/dark furniture because I already had that and I wanted touches of leather and natural wood)
- gather inspiration (optional – hiring an interior design service like Havenly)
- decide on a few splurge pieces that will tie the room together (for me it was a vintage rug I’d been eyeing from Ambitious Home and my meeting table and chairs)
- set a budget and time frame (I set a budget of $2,000 – over the course of 2 years)
I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing this small home office makeover reveal. Please leave any questions about this makeover in the comments below!
Other posts you might enjoy:
- Catching Up With The Kelnhofers-26
- Catching Up With The Kelnhofers-25
- Catching Up With The Kelnhofers-24
Rachel says
Hi Phi! Care to share how your office chair is working now that you’ve had it for a while? I need a real office chair and recalled that you had posted this. Sometimes it’s good to hear how it’s going after the initial excitement of a big new purchase wears off.
Thanks!
Sweetphi says
What a good question!!! Thank you for asking. I absolutely LOVE my chair, it’s one of my favorite purchases ever. I use it for hours every single day. It helps with sitting posture, and my back never hurts sitting in it. I will say that my husband doesn’t love it. He got a Herman Miller Aeron, they’re crazy expensive ($900+), but we found that you could buy them refurbished for $450. That one is more ‘loungy’ if you ask me, but still very comfy, I happen to like mine better because I feel it helps with sitting and posture. Hope that helps!!
Cathy Cormia says
You certainly did a great job with the remodel..looks really nice!