A Home Office Built for Two
This project has been a long-time coming, but truthfully, I didn’t have a vision for it. Chance and I both had a hard time marrying what we really wanted, aesthetic-wise with what we needed, function-wise. Add in the fun twist of the room being VERY small and you’ll understand why we’ve been at a standstill for so long.
I’ve made the mistake in the past of jumping into a project we really needed without any design direction — and vice-versa. I’ve dove into a project with a full, detailed design: a paint color, accessories, etc, but no real plan for how we will functionally use the space. Both end with me being fed up by the space and frankly abandoning the space. So this time, I sat with it. I tried to figure it all out first, and I’m so excited to share it with you.
Inspiration, Design & Budget
Chance and I are always attracted to moody spaces packed with books and plants. If there’s a dark study — we’re drooling. The trouble is that this space is about 150 sqft with one east-facing window and an old recessed square ceiling light. The odds are stacked against us. Here are a few spaces we love and drew inspiration from:
For this space, we’re going for an organic modern library aesthetic. After lots of samples and a very helpful color consultation call with Lick’s Color Experts, we narrowed the paint color choices down to Lick Green 02 and Lick x SoHo House Teal 03. Lick gifted us four gallons of our final color decision: Green 02.
SUGGESTED PUNCH LIST:
Accent wall ($300)
Paint walls & ceiling ($100)
New ceiling light
New desks ($300)
Built-in bookcases & window seat ($200)
Command center ($50)
Whiteboard wall
Storage closet
Photo backdrop storage
Neon sign ($150)
ESTIMATED BUDGET: $1500
After picking the paint color, I settled on this rug (Loloi II Layla Olive/Charcoal) which was easy because it’s the one in our dining room. I absolutely love it but it’s a little small for the dining space, so I plan to move it into the office and replace the dining one eventually. The rug is packed with my favorite interior colors and tones: sage and olive green, charcoal, tan, beige, and cream.
I knew I wanted to pull those colors and textures in through new desks, an accent wall, built-in bookcases, a checkerboard bulletin board, and new lighting.
The Fluted Accent Wall of my Dreams
I was mostly done designing the space when I saw With | Sara Le’s son’s bedroom makeover. She added this brown reeded accent wall and I was immediately in love. Sara used the ever illusive pole wrap to create the texture on the walls. It’s so beautiful, however, it is really really hard to find in many places. It’s also a pretty expensive DIY supply. The pole wrap comes in long, narrow panels (16-inch x 96-inch) at $80. For as much wall as I would need to cover, this just wasn’t feasible for us. But I couldn’t get the idea out of my head so I messaged my DIY besties, @interiordesigndropout and @baker.blooms, to chat about potential options.
Meg said she had seen some bamboo wall covering on Amazon that could be a potential dupe, but had never ordered it before. I was willing to take the risk and wow did it pay off. Once I knew I could make this budget option work, my design was complete. I would paint the accent wall green, as well as the ceiling and trim for that moody and modern monochromatic look.
I ordered three of the FOREVER BAMBOO Wainscoting Wall Panels in the natural raw color (since I knew I’d be painting it.) This was much more affordable at $80 for an 8-foot x 4-foot panel. I only needed three to fill the entire wall.
Bamboo Wall Covering Pros:
affordable
very lightweight — we only needed nails to hang it up
comes in a variety of colors
looks JUST like an expensive pole wrap
flexible
can be cut
The only real con I found was that the three panels were not identical. So unlike pole wrap, it would be hard to conceal the seams. This didn’t really pose an issue for us, as we planned to add the grid detail on top of the fluted wall. But something to note if you want to substitute this for pole wrap.
Cutting The Bamboo Panels
The bamboo pole wrap dupe was very easy to cut. It’s held together with a mesh backing, which keeps it flexible and easy to cut. If you need to trim it horizontally, or along the grain, it can easily be done with a utility knife. This is a huge time saver. We had to cut around one outlet, for which I used our HART Tools Power Cutter. However, for the upper panels, we had to cut about 10 inches off the end of the entire length. To do that, we kept the wrap rolled and taped it then used the miter saw to cut the diameter. It was simple and didn’t split as I feared.
We attached the bamboo to the wall with traditional nails. Wall adhesives will do a great job at keeping the wood on the wall, but it will destroy the drywall if you ever want to remove it. For that reason, I avoid it. We will nail gun the accent wall cross sections, which will add stability to the bamboo as well. One those were up, we were ready to caulk, prime and paint.
Prep Work, Priming & Painting
By far my least favorite part of any DIY project is “prep work.” Chance said something this last time that did really resonate with me. It’s something they say in photography:
What you don’t do in pre, you’ll have to do in post.
Meaning, you can either fill the holes and smooth the walls before you paint or after, and doing it after is the absolute worst. So we took our time to do the prep work, something I hate to admit has taken me this long to learn.
Much of the room needed to be caulked. In fact, none of the doorframes were calked and some of the baseboards were missing caulk too. We fixed that, along with caulking the edging of the accent wall.
Because the walls are so dark and the ceiling is pretty splotchy, we need to prime it all. We used Zinsser Bulls Eye 1-2-3 and follow up with Lick Paint. I am so impressed by both the coverage of the Lick paint, and the accuracy of their peel-and-stick color samples. The true color is really captured in these temporary samples, which makes selecting paint so much easier.
Coming Up:
Desk installation
Command center design
Built-in bookcases