If you missed part one of the DIY office series, you can check out all the before photos, here. And part two of the series goes through the process of decking out the space, and the DIY walls, chalkboards and whiteboards that you can check out, here.
Gotta love that modern, mid-century appeal. I wanted to build a shabby-chic experience in the office with branded colors, creative walls, and clean modern furniture.
I didn’t just go out and buy chairs from Knoll and Eames. We looked all over to find the same look, and made a lot of the furniture ourselves. It was fun!
DIY “Designer” Furniture…
Of course, being an artist and designer… I just can’t take much off the shelf and place it in my space! I wanted a specific look, and the furniture to match—AND I didn’t want to have to spend thousands of dollars for my designer-looking furniture.
You can have the best of all the worlds.
I found some reclaimed lumber on Craigs List that was being given away for free. We took the wood from a run-down, demolished turn-of-the-20th-century movie theater down the street. Now, that was pretty cool! The wood was from the 1850’s and looked like it. There were lots of cool knots and holes from giant nails, and the wood was HUGE—in 2″x10″x8′ sections.
We took the wood, and stripped it of all the nails. I set aside 5 of the pieces for a workstation table that I envisioned. I took the remainder of the wood to a hardware store and asked them to strip it for us in 1/2″ sections. So, we got most of our wood for free, and it was reclaimed and has that awesome shabby-chic look about it.
I designed the furniture I wanted in the office. This is what I was looking for:
- One 4’x6′ Desk space for 4 computers
- One “sofa table” for the entryway
- 2 Hexagonal Side Tables
I designed all the dimensions and made a mood-board for my friend that was going to build these for me. I’m great at designing—not at woodworking, so I left the awesome craftsmanship up to my buddy. I then ordered 1/4″ raw steel hairpin legs. I just couldn’t get enough of that mid-century appeal.
I think the legs were around $20/each, and the wood was free. Most of my budget from that point went into the labor, and if I remember correctly… I think the little tables worked out to be under $200 a piece, and the big table to under $600. That was great for me, because I was looking at similar tables at Pottery Barn for $2,000+.
It pays off to be resourceful. And, only do what you love. I love designing (not building) so I made sure to have that covered.
I love the way the furniture came out!!
We also made our own rolling white board. This was easy too. I ordered a Z-garment rack online. After it showed up, we picked up two shower boards, and a sheet of 3/4″ installation foam.
We cut all the boards to size, and glued it all together using Gorilla Glue. We then drilled holes all along the sides, and zip-tied the new white board to the garment rack. Perfect! All the supplies cost about $100. That was significantly better than the $500+ it would have cost to purchase a new white board rack.
Woohoo! Here’s to DIY-ing your office!
Designing & Decorating the Rest of the Office.
Like I mentioned earlier, I was really going for that mid-century modern appeal. Again, I LOVE designing and relished at designing and decorating our space. It was easy for me.
I chose to keep the white aesthetic going with the furniture.
I promptly ordered a lounge-chair from Ikea, and scoured the Internet for Eames knock-off chairs (I didn’t really want to pay $500 for each plastic chair… knock offs were good enough for me!). The plastic chairs were under $150 for the set of 2, the Ikea chair was $100,
I found white-pleather rolling office chairs on Ebay for $140 each, and grabbed the Knoll knock-off, single-seater at Target for $300. It looked like a designer office, for much less than designer prices. To give you an idea, the official Knoll Barcelona chair alone, would have been approximately $1500.
The Meditation Room…
We decided to have a meditation room in our office. It seemed only fitting in the small room with the doors. We were after all, just starting our “mindful business practice” and I loved being able to sit in the meditation space for my breaks in between working to refocus my brain.
I picked up an assortment of pillows and meditation cushions at Pier One (on sale!) for the room. I then asked some friends that worked at a local coffee roaster to grab some coffee bags to bring home. I stapled the coffee bags to the ceiling, and hung little glass orbs, air plants and gemstones from the ceiling. It was Heaven…
And I totally relished in adding glass doors!
I found one the partial glass door at a garage sale for $10. We just repainted it and hung it on the door frame. I then ordered a new, white-framed, frosted-glass door for the other frame to let more light into the space.
The custom door was $175. I thought that was pretty good, also considering the other door was $10. We already had the bright-blue futon (made in NY!) that I placed in the meditation room, along with a yoga mat 😉
Decorating the space fully was easy too. I mostly just grabbed some extra books (mostly on branding, marketing and personal development), lots of little air plants and succulents, a big fern, and some geometric metal sculptures and geometric-shaped gemstones.
The Window “Treatments…”
I don’t really believe in “window treatments.” I think your windows can look awesome (and let in tons of light) with the “less-is-more” approach.
We DIY-ed our curtain rods to match the rest of our furniture. The curtain rods were iron pipes, with joints and flashing. I remember the rods costing about $20-$25 for each rod. Not too bad. Then, I found some simple, sheer white curtains online for $10 for a pack of two. I only used one curtain on each window, and swept them to the side to let the light in.
I don’t remember exactly how much the entire project cost, but being resourceful and DIY-ing a lot of the furniture and more certainly made it affordable! Being resourceful pays off…
Done and done!
Well, that’s a wrap. We no longer have this epic office. We desired more to travel and build an online business, but I thought the DIY rundown was epic enough to post anyway!
What do you think? Have you done anything similar? Let us know in the comments!
