Houzz Feature: My Garage Conversion

Check out my garage conversion featured on Houzz.

source

I know garage conversions are somewhat controversial and I explained in my interview that our garage was unusable as a place to park cars because the access to it no longer existed.  Unfortunately the editor omitted that bit of vital information, hence some of the comments.

Here are the pictures that I submitted to Houzz.

Garage before (incase you couldn't tell)!

garage before

Houzz also want to do a house feature.  I don't think I dare.  The comments can almost be as nasty as on Apartment Therapy.

Speaking of AT, today is the last day to vote for my room in the Room for Color contest.  I'm currently 10th.  I need to be in the top 5 to contend for the prize.  There's some great entries this year, as well as some not so great.  The top two rooms in my category have definitely been promoting the heck out of their rooms on Facebook which is part of the contest.  Fortunately this year, the judges get to pick who wins.  Lets hope they pick a good one; it definitely won't be mine ;(

*NEWSFLASH* - just found out that Abigail Ahern is going to be on the panel of judges for the AT Room for Color Contest.  I wouldn't be surprised if another judge will be Emily Henderson.  I'm kind of bummed they didn't judge the past two competitions this way.  I still think my room is pretty good but the scores on everyone's entires are pretty low this year, and you'll notice that the rooms that have the highest scores have the highest number of Facebook shares.  I deliberately didn't want to bug my friends this year for votes and only shared it twice, but now I'm rethinking that strategy.  So, if you like my designs, please vote here.  Thanks!!!

Battle of the Home Offices Update

So it's been over 2 years since I threw down the challenge to the hubby to design the best home office.  Originally Damian was going to have a say in his design.  But I couldn't let him do it and completely took over!  He did though end up being a great laborer and did all of the work including laying the floor, framing, installing windows and doors, drywall, painting, cabinet installation, electrical.  You name it, he did it.  And it looks great.  I haven't posted pictures before because it's still not finished, but as with most projects, it may never be.

Here's a reminder of how it looked before:

Here it is in progress:

The garage doors were removed and replaced with two sets of french doors.  It's a long story, but you couldn't drive into the garage anyway, so replacing the door doesn't diminish the garage's functionality.

And here's how it looks now:

As you can probably tell, the majority of the furnishings is from Ikea.

The sconces and white lights are from West Elm.

The red office chairs are from Staples.

The wall was painted with a dry erase paint.  The boys love to draw on it also.

Well we are British, so why not have a London bus picture?  The clocks show the times in England, Salt Lake City and Tokyo (all the places where Damian and his partners work).

Damian's Lego Sophwith Camel.  He'd been asking Santa for this for a couple of years.  He finally managed to buy it for himself in the Lego Store in New York.

Damian's self-help book section!  As well as his toys.

Of course it used to be a garage, so where else are we going to store the bikes!

And here's a picture of my home office which I know you've seen a gazillion times before.

I think I succeeded in designing a non-girly workspace for Damian's new business and a totally girly space for me!  Which do you prefer?

Happy Easter 2011

Hope you're enjoying your Easter Sunday!  We had some unusual decorations on our table.  I wonder what is in the colourful eggs?

Why, baby monsters of course!

Styling Roman!

Nothing like searching for eggs in a building site!

Man Cave His Office progress

Happy Easter!

Battle of the Home Offices

My evil plan worked!  I've made the home office so girly that Damian refuses to come in here.  It's finally spurred him in to action to do something with the absolutely wasted space that was formally a garage.  Let the battle begin, may the best girl/boy win.

Starting point.

mine

his

Items we have to reincorporate into the new spaces:
Mine: desk & chair
His: table, chairs, bookcase, office accessories, rugs, any old piece of crap furniture that has found its way into the garage.

New items:
Mine: bookshelves, bench, light, lamps, office accessories, stool.
His: nothing too expensive, I hope!  Although he is threatening to put in one of those god awful ikea office desks that go round a corner, yuck.

More before pictures of the garage.

Beautiful garage built in the 1950's

Yes that is a fence built across the driveway, hence no access for car, hence dumping ground for old furniture, electronics, paint, anything that was too much effort to take to the dump or sell.

New french doors

 Damian neglected to take before pictures of the old garage door.  Tsk, tsk.  Doesn't he know people want to see true before pictures!  Anyway, the french doors were my idea, don't let him tell you any different.  We also plan on putting a french door that we already had where the stable door was.   No more Mr. Ed, unfortunately.  (People always thought we kept a horse in there!)

What a mess!

Progress

So now that we are officially going to have a his & hers office, I can really go over the top.  Umm, where can I incorporate some pink?  I did buy this the other day, which wasn't on my original design board.

westelm.com

Isn't he cute?  Yes, I know another bird thing.

You're probably wondering where he's going to go, well I was in Ikea and spotted this:

Malm table from Ikea.com

So I bought it in white to go along the back wall of the office.

The lamp is from the living room and will be replaced with the owl lamp.

The posters were my compromise for Damian.  I'm thinking of framing them in black.  They're just temporarily propped up there.  I had planned on surprising Damian with an original 40 inches by 60 inches Help poster from the sixties from Ebay.  I even had the winning bid for a couple of hours.  I was prepared to go up to $150, really who would pay more than that for a poster (sorry Kevin!)?  But I was outbid by hundreds!!  Next time Dame.

Back to the garage mahal.  Here are some pretty garage conversions.  I wonder if Damian's plan will turn out like any of these?

image from apartmenttherapy.com

image from casasugar.com