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!!!

New Client! Feminine Home Office.

I've been a busy little beaver for the past few weeks.  And it doesn't look like things are slowing down anytime soon.  I'm so fortunate to have the pleasure of working with a super cute young couple who recently moved (like 10 days ago!) to the area.  They have a pretty good idea of what they want, they just need some help consolidating their style.

The first room that we're going to tackle is the home office for Mrs. Client.  This picture shows the furniture that she had in her old apartment.  There really isn't any workspace, and it's a bit brown.

Don't worry, she didn't choose the valance.  The requirements for the space include a good sized desk, some storage cubbies, a fun patterned rug and a sleeper sofa.

Here's one of the mood boards that I came up with based around a blue trellis rug that she loves.

And here's another mood board with similar elements but using a pink sofa instead of beige.

Which one do you prefer?

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?

Anthropologie Pinned My Room!

I'm so thrilled to know that Anthropologie (my favorite store) liked my music room/library enough to pin it on to one of their inspiration boards.

I think I'm more thrilled about this than when I found out that Katie Couric had pinned my chair!

Don't you just love Pinterest?

Apartment Therapy Room for Color 2011

Welcome Apartment Therapy readers!  Thanks so much for all of your kind comments.  As promised, here's some more pictures of my home office.  I've also included a before picture, shocking isn't it?

It's really hard to take a picture of the whole room because I couldn't stand far enough back.  I think I need a better lens for my camera.

I wanted to surprise my hubby with an original oversized Beatles Help movie poster which was twice the size of these ones.  But alas the bidding surpassed my meager budget by hundreds.  One day.

Yes, I'm obsessed with birds, and um it appears chevron!  Really the pattern on the back of the bookcases doesn't stand out nearly as much as it looks in the photos.  It's more of an accent.  And because I merely ironed starched fabric on to the backs, it should be an easy update if I decide to change it.

 I used cute sticky labels to add a bit of color and pattern to the generic Ikea Kasset boxes.

And here's a before picture.  I'm deliberately keeping it small so you don't see how messy it is.  Oh, who am I kidding?

Yikes, orange, faux painted walls.  So from this you can see that I reused the desk, the chair, the blinds, and the drapes.  I would like to get rid of the blinds but we need them for privacy.

Here's a tutorial on how I recovered the chair.  It's not very extensive, because I didn't know that people would be that interested, but it's been repinned a million times on Pinterest.  Next time I'll make sure that I do it step by step.  And here's how I did the light shade.

Thanks for visiting.  TTFN (ta ta for now)!

Oh, and if you want to vote for my home office go here.