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Hello! I'm Suzannah, a serious DIYer and mom of two little ones. Follow along with my DIY fixer upper house renovations, sewing and crafty projects, real food recipes, and de-stressing goals.
I believe you can love your home just the way it is, AND have the power to design and make big changes to make it better.
I'm also the author of DIY Wardrobe Makeovers!

Historic home office renovation reveal!

  • 6.23.2021

Wahoo!! Our office renovation is complete. I'm tired. It was a lot of work in a short time but I'm very happy with it!


New here?

If you're new to this blog from the ORC site, welcome!! I'm Suzannah, a longtime DIYer and design lover currently making over our 1937 Tudor revival style home, our second fixer-upper. My style is modern traditional and I'm always working toward high quality design.

I have a 3-year-old and 10-month-old, but my husband and I have done almost all of the work on our homes ourselves! I've blogged about all of it so you can check out my tutorials page and room reveals to see. You can also follow along with me and my projects on Instagram! I also co-host the Your Home Story podcast!

See all my posts about this ORC here! 


Tudor Revival home office renovation

Honestly, this project was a head-scratcher! It's really hard to make a functional office look good, or to make a beautiful office really functional. The cords, the desk chair, the Zoom background demands... plus, ours also needs to be a play space for our 10-month-old while I'm working sometimes, and I record podcasts there! Our office situation had just gotten so bad after we moved our rooms around last summer and this room became a dumping ground as well as workspace. So I needed a kick in the pants to get this project done and make it something I'm proud of!

Welcome! This room is north-facing, so the medium-light green paint color looks blue in some lights. It's really pretty and is a big change from the white with dark wood of the rest of our living spaces! That fireplace is not functional and takes up a lot of wall space, but it's kind of cool. After, and before...

Most of the office function is on the desk wall. We didn't have a big budget for this project and I decided to keep our basic IKEA desk setup and make it work. It doesn't go with the antique round table, no, but... neither does the comfortable desk chair. Those are never pretty, but when I've shared photos of my workspaces with cuter chairs I always get questions, is that comfortable for 8 hours? and the answer is always no. So I'm keeping it real.

I do recommend hiding your internet situation with pretty flowers any time you can. ;)

On the other side is my comfy chair. For a long time we had half of an old sectional in our office and it was really handy for breastfeeding Lucy while working, cause I would set my work laptop on top of a big plastic box to raise it up. Seriously. I'll have to mix in some before photos in this post. (You can see them all here.) This chair is SO comfortable and a huge upgrade!

I made the slipcover myself using this blue linen from Fashion Fabrics Club. I've been a fan of theirs literally since childhood (they used to send out paper newsletters with a stack of fabric swatches you'd tape to the images, and I loved doing it with my mom). I am really excited to partner with them and share them with you! They have a great, unique selection of higher quality fabrics than you can find at most fabric stores. This linen is super heavy weight and great for this slipcover. (Update: here's the slipcover tutorial.)

I copied the slipcover the chair came with (I'll do a tutorial on that process soon) but gave it a ruffle at the bottom for fun, and some vintage 1940's vibes that work in our home!

I made the curtain on the door from this lightweight cotton from Fashion Fabrics Club and it is also a huge improvement from what we had before (a cheap blackout roller shade from when this was Otto's nursery and we needed it darker in here). It is so pretty, but also blocks the view of the garage!

The fireplace screen is a DIY using steel, expanded metal, and metal spray paint from DIY Steel (partnership). I love the brass with the wall color in here! It's a DIY version of this one from Pottery Barn.

I had a lot of fun with the art. I shared about that last week, but short story is, you can do a lot with museum downloads and matte giclee prints from Mpix. That's what the vertical tree, city sketch, and cloud/tree above the desk are and I am so happy with them! You can get 25% off your order at Mpix with code createenjoy2521 through 7/31/21!

These are pieces are vintage, thrifted, as is that chair. I set up this little moment off-center on the wall but centered between the door swing and door opening, and I love an off-center/unexpected art placement. 

Also check out the gorgeous antique brass switch plates and outlet covers. They're from Nostalgic Warehouse (partnership), an incredible source for reproduction vintage and antique look door hardware, switch plates, and more. I have worked with them before for our dining room and love these plates for our home! You can even see two more in the hall! SO much better than white plastic in this vintage vibe space!

The light, dusty sagey green/aqua I chose (Sherwin-Williams SW 6205 Comfort Gray) looks different in different lights and even different parts of the same wall! It is really pretty, though, and I love it with the art and rug!

I was so embarrassed to share these photos and how we were actually living with the office for a long time... I still am, actually--design aside, that's a lot of mess! So even though this is still an office, with modern desk chair and mic stand, it's so much better. 

There we have it. I'm wiped, so's Jason--we really didn't have capacity to do this project, but we are so happy to have it now!

Sources:

Check out the featured One Room Challenge participants here and the guest participants in each week's post here. And, you can enter your email here to get updates when I share posts every week about this project! Thanks for following along!

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