WELCOME

Hello! I'm Suzannah, a home design lover and mom of two, with one more on the way in January 2027. Follow along with my DIY fixer upper house renovations, design tips, occasional sewing and crafty projects, and de-stressing goals.

I show you how to create a beautiful home that still works with kids!

Subscribe to the blog below and join me on Substack here!
office
Showing posts with label office. Show all posts

7.24.2024

Mudroom/sewing room tour!

A few years ago I renovated this pass-through room that goes from our downstairs hall to the garage as my office. Previously it had been Otto’s nursery when we lived entirely downstairs! It was definitely awkward as a nursery. It was pretty good as an office because it’s downstairs near the kitchen, etc., but the north facing windows sometimes made it feel dreary. So I moved my home office to the guest room when I updated that space, and was left with this funky room that pretty easily became a catch-all for shoes and coats and returns going out the door. So I cleaned it up, and made it functional again with some hooks and shoe shelving, and still had room for my sewing stuff on the former desk.

Mudroom/Office Reveal

No comments

5.05.2021

Embarassing home office makeover BEFORE and inspiration: Week 1 One Room Challenge

Well… Here goes! I am excited and apprehensive to kick off this One Room Challenge project for our office! I love the One Room Challenge and have participated several times before, usually for pretty intense renovations (three bathrooms and two bedrooms, all of which you can find here). This one is more on the cosmetic side, but in some ways will be more challenging because of what I have to work with!

When I started working from home last year, we quickly got an office set up for me upstairs. That was great, but now that we have another baby we’ve moved our rooms around and that’s Otto's room. I am working downstairs in his old room, a north-facing room with one window and a bunch of mismatched, thrown-together decor. It is depressing and ugly, and messy. I haven’t been feeling super motivated to do anything with it because I just don’t know what to do that will make it look good! But I’m challenging myself to come up with some ideas, and I’m fueled by some really beautiful inspiration photos I’ve pulled lately.

Over the next 8 weeks I will transform this room, using high end design inspiration, budget friendly and vintage pieces, and I’m sure there will be some DIYs too!

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 9-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! 

Just an inspiration, since I don't want to scar you with photos of our actual office this early in the post! Image source
No comments

4.30.2020

Quick and easy office makeover reveal!

The office/spare room on our second floor has been through a lot. When we first moved in it literally had two built-in platform beds and a train track platform on the walls. Then we got that out and got it cleaned out enough to be used as a sewing room, but it was never pretty. Then it was kind of a guest room and was used a few times, and then we put the desks back but there was still plenty of random stuff stored in there, nothing pretty.

Now with the health crisis, I've been working from home for my day job from there (this is week 7!) and was really motivated to get it looking good (enough)!!

This is not a high-end designer makeover. It's real people normal stuff, not spending any money or installing any new architectural wall treatments or whatever... but just these small changes and decor have made it SO much better to work in this room!


Simple home office makeover



No comments

1.31.2019

A temporary solution I am LOVING: picture light in an office space!

Maybe it's because of our recent Your Home Story podcast episode all about office spaces... I recently got motivated to solve a problem at my desk/office space (a corner of our dining room) and it's not done yet, but I LOVE it! I wanted to share since I got some follow-up questions when I shared on my Instagram.


This post contains affiliate links.

My "office" space is pretty embarrassing right now. CORDS, black on black/dark wood that shows all the dust, index card taped over the power button cause Otto loves to pull himself up and stand at the computer tower...

And this is when it's clean! But, it's very functional for me right now when I want to be able to work in the center of the action--cooking dinner, maximizing naptime, etc. I am cool with my desk being in this corner of our dining room and it's actually very unobtrusive when we have guests over in the dining or living room.

No comments

1.22.2019

Design, Make, & Live: Offices

Home offices are typically mostly about function. Desk, comfortable chair, printer, to-do list... the design doesn't really come first.

But, there are tons of ways you can make a home office space beautiful as well as practical. This post links lots of ideas and solutions for utilitarian essentials and design features, plus four (very different) gorgeous office inspirations from around the web!


This post contains affiliate links.

On the Your Home Story podcast this week, we do a deep dive into office design and function. We start by talking about the utilitarian essentials (and how to make them more attractive), including constant design challenges like the table-vs-desk debate!, and then cover design features that add style while also being practical.

Resources from this episode:
  1. My townhouse home tour and office/sewing room
  2. Ashley’s current sunroom/office
  3. The HP printer that charges you based on prints/usage if you use HP Instant Ink
  4. Ashley’s office board on Pinterest
  5. My office board on Pinterest
  6. The Nesting With Grace “Magic Light Trick” you can use to add sconces above a desk or to add interest and light
  7. Inspiration image of a hanging light over a workspace
  8. My affordable and cute office chair round-up
  9. Butcher paper roll holder and clip set for to-do list
  10. Inspiration image of an oversized design board
  11. Some cute acrylic wall-mounted calendars: 1, 2, 3
  12. The clear plastic pegboard system I used in my sewing room
  13. The Grid-It product you can use to corral and hide cords mounted to a desk

Four office inspirations we love:
  1. Ashley from the Gold Hive - Hand Painted mural, pendant light, table (without drawers)
  2. Lindsey from Hello Hydrangea - A weaver so her office displays lots of her yarns, looms, etc.
  3. Yellow Brick Home - Small office setup with table and storage and then seating area on the other side.
  4. Jones Design Co - Office/studio with desk and table setup
Source

We’d love to hear your office challenges, and see your office design solutions! Share in our Facebook group here!

Listen here or in your favorite podcast player!
No comments

8.20.2018

Office/sewing room in a hurry! Before, progress, and design - and affordable office chairs

A common dynamic over here is I am usually really gung-ho about projects and decorating, and Jason is usually more reasonable and realistic about what we can get done without going crazy. It's tough for me with a million things to do in this house to get it feeling "done" enough for now... but understandably tough on him when I always want us to work! Poor guy.

Sooooo, when Jason suggested we get the office/sewing room ready in the next week (before he starts back at physical therapy school and wants a dedicated study space), I jumped on the idea!


This post contains affiliate links.

I was thinking we'd just put our old drop-leaf table up there and I'd pull out my sewing machine when needed, and we'd figure out what kind of storage we need there later. But Jason wants it to be nice, sooner, with plenty of desk space for both of us.

Office inspirations


We're planning to deck it out with a whole wall of IKEA desks, but I want it to look beautiful, too. I immediately put together some mood boards and ideas for a couple of IKEA desk options. I went to my Offices pinboard and found a few inspirations...
Source

No comments

9.23.2013

An office décor update and amazing DIY!

And now, the story of a boring office and sewing room space, that got an update, a fabulous shiny gold DIY wall accent, and a little re-arranging.

I'm so super excited about this home decorating update because I spend so much time in our office/sewing room and it's been so blah until now! You may have seen the photos/tour of my home, but I haven't shown much of my office. It hasn't been really ready for your eyes yet. It's very small and pretty plain; I like a little minimalism and light colors in a workspace, but it's almost boring or un-decorated-looking.

I hardly even had any DIY's in it! Just these framed quote prints I made, with fave quotes from from The Happiness Project, and the gold spray paint initials I made for above the bed but have since moved.

(How about that bare bulb above the ironing board... ;) )

And if that wall was boring... how about the opposite side? Sharing it with Husband and the big computer. This space has not been decorated! (Shhh!! Don't look! Still a work in progress!)

If you've been following along with our house decor process, you may have seen my recent attempts to jazz up our new home with faux wallpaper stenciling, a big stripe pattern, and a bold navy guest room wall (see it all in my home tour). I've thought about painting something fun on one of the walls of our office, and I love brights in sewing rooms/offices (see those pins!), but I did not have the energy or commitment for painting another wall this time. I was hoping for a DIY project with a little less time commitment and mess.

So it is super fabulous that I got a chance to check out the fabulous wall decals from Urban Walls--you may have seen these around or in your Instagram feed--so many gorgeous accents! Gold polka dots, little silver or black stars, cute words... so, so many wonderful things! I reached out to Danielle like literally as she was having her baby, so it was so sweet of her to send along this fabulous gold heart decal anyway. (She has a beautiful blog, too!)

How to put up a wall decal


Prepare for some serious before/after success here, but first, here's a little on how to use the decal! I had never put up something like one of these before, so big and sticky! My husband got this AT-AT decal on Amazon for our game room and it was such an enormous pain to put up because of all the tiny pieces... it looks awesome, but it was nuts. So I was a little apprehensive but I'm glad to say that this decal went on much easier. And came with better instructions.

It came as a huge roll, so you cut around the shape with a little of the backing surrounding the design. (I put that tray on top to flatten it out for few minutes after unrolling!)

I taped it up in various configurations, trying to imagine the angle I wanted. I'd seen this decal put up straight on, but I wanted to include more of my wall space in the active part of the design, I guess... stretch it out a little from desk to ironing area.

A couple options I considered...

Once I found *the* spot, I taped it on well and traced around the paper here and there so I could line up the top paper layer once I peeled off the backing.

Then I peeled off the backing and had a huge sticky gold heart on my hands! (I probably should have done this with help, but... I didn't. I was impatient. It's cool, it worked out. ;) )

I lined up the edges of the front paper layer with the pencil marks I'd drawn on the wall and began to carefully stick the whole thing down.

Then I pressed reallllllly hard on the top round piece of the heart, and slowly and carefully peeled the front paper layer off!

And tore it as I went...

Done!!!


Before and after, pretty sewing space!


Now for some "after" shots of the pretty sewing area! I did have to change a couple other things when I hung the heart and moved the quote prints and thread rack. I also covered that bare bulb with a pretty Ikea chandelier I had sitting around!

This is where I sew!
(Edit: The amazing clear pegboard system is this one. I love it!!)

I found an even better place for the thread rack, too.

The "Keep calm and blog on" print is by my blogger pal Macey of Motormouth Studios--she made them for us for a blogger event once. Love it!

Yes, I know I have a lot of scissors. ;)

There it is! A much improved office and sewing space, and a fabulous and doable DIY decor project!
11 comments

SUBSCRIBE BY EMAIL

Get new posts by email:

Search

​
© Create / Enjoy • Theme by Maira G.