During quarantine, we have been working tirelessly to renovate our backroom/bonus room into my new home office and now I can say it's finally finished! A huge shout out to my husband's parents (the best parents-in-law) for making my dream office a reality. We honestly couldn't do it without them and they put in a lot of hours to help us do this renovation.
First Steps
This room was my least favorite area in our whole house due to the head-to-toe knotty pine paneling and 70's style green linoleum flooring. Now it is my favorite room! We used it mainly for storage and it soon became cluttered with all of our various things from books and movies to extra home decor.
First thing's first we had to clear out all this stuff. We bought multiple storage bins and moved out all of our furniture.
Design Choices
Painting
At first, I was torn on what to do with our knotty pine walls. I wanted the space to have contrast, be bright, and ultimately be a room that I wanted to spend time in. Painting everything was the easiest solution. It immediately made the room seem more fresh and inviting.
Deciding on colors and finding the right paint was easier said than done! We knew we wanted to do the walls gray, the ceiling white, and have an accent wall of a darker color. Of course I didn't get it right on the first try.
I picked out a very light gray that wasn't dark enough to contrast with the white ceiling, and the shades were too close to each other. After painting all the walls the light gray, I wasn't thrilled with the way the colors looked and had second thoughts. We ran back to Home Depot to find and test another gray, a much darker shade than my original color choice called Hot Stone that seemed scary at first, but it ended up being the winner!
Accent Wall
For the accent wall, I found this beautiful blue-gray color called Slate Tile by Sherwin Williams from another blog here that I loved. I think it's a great color for an accent and compliments our gray and white color scheme nicely. We pulled off the wood planks from the wall, painted them, and then reapplied them horizontally to give off the famous shiplap look.
Desktop
I am a fan of butcher block countertops so we picked up an unfinished wide slab and stained it ourselves. If I remember correctly, I think the stain was called "weathered gray" and it was an oil-based stain so it required a few coats of polyurethane afterward. I couldn't have been happier with the end result and it's one of my favorite parts in the whole room!
Flooring
We have Pergo flooring throughout the rest of our house and we really like it so it was an easy decision to use it again in the office. The benefits of using Pergo laminate flooring is that its waterproof, scratch and stain-resistant and fairly easy to install. I picked out a gray-toned textured flooring called Trenton Oak from Lowe's to match my gray walls and desktop. Goodbye green linoleum!
Before & After
Here you can see the before and after comparison. What a difference!
Thanks for reading. If you need me I will probably be in my new home office!