finally – the project diy “office”

You might wonder what happened to the weekend DIY project to revamp a little office – yes, we did it, and a bit more. I have been waiting for a sunny day to take some nice pictures, but there has been none! And as the days are pretty short (somewhere between 9am-3.30pm and getting shorter every day) that changes were pretty slim anyway.

The difference in that little office is amazing, although the pictures don’t seem to tell such a great story. What started as a cramped office with dated decor, even older furniture (and way too much of it too) and tons and tons of paper cluttering every nook, ended up with a clean and spacious office with some new furniture and lots of less paper than before.

And for once the miracle of staying within the budget happened – to a degree that we splashed out to some extra accessories not needed for office work, but just for the sake of making it a bit more casual and comfortable space. To tally the total the flooring and skirting totalled less than $300 (200 euros or so), the paints $200 (140 Euros), the tiles and supplies in the bathroom less than $300 (200 Euros). The two new desks, office chairs, storage shelving, rug and storage containers from Ikea were under $1000 (600 Euros or so) and the trip to the tip with the old furniture a grand $12 (8 Euros). Some accessories that were not used came from the owner’s house, such as the designer wall art made from wood and the umbrella stand. Nice additions to the “looks cool” category. Labour was obviously free and worked for “food and drinks” – at least I was happy to learn a new, fun skill – tiling.

So let me present – project DIY office on a budget:

Some starting point images – see the dark brown wall and always dirty-looking vinyl flooring. We are testing the new rug here already… The table and chairs are cool and happy though – a 70s version of the Saarinen Tulip series. They will definitely stay!

The entrance hallway. Old natty couch and way too much paper on the way to shredder…did I mention that I helped to do a good deal of shredding too

Kitchen cum storage – enter if you can…

Lovely bathroom with stripy vinyl walls …

And the work starts:

New floor’s in – wall changed from brown to cream. Huge job to empty and un-assemble – and reassemble the storage units!

Can you spot the new Ikea furniture – somehow I managed to loose the picture of old chaos with lots of wood furniture and room dividers – anyway, this certainly is a huge improvement.

I thought this new window cover with scribbled numbers was quite fun, and being light it lets the light through to kitchen side too

A close shot of the window fabric

This is how good the kitchen/storage room looks now. Order and space. Outcome of hours of shredder use…

Here’s the hallway afterwards – new floor, paint and storage too. Gone is the old sofa and extra stuff…

Little details – found under all the papers. Cute moss bunnies.

We chickened out in the end with all the bright colours. Resulting in a bit lame moss green wall – still better than the old yellow!

This cute little umbrella stand add some country feel

The entrance hallways has more colour and boldness, such as this magnet board (missing the magnets at this point though)

A touch of green(ish purple) in the form of succulents as the office workers are not known for their ability to keep plants alive…

Tiles for the bathoom floor

My masterpiece – the tiling. I did not have time to do grout though. But the lines look pretty straight to me…