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My thrifty home office makeover – room tour of the finished space

It's finally happened! I have my very own finished home office! I'm sat at my wall-to-wall DIY desk as we speak, uploading tons of photos to this blog post and I can't wait to show you everything in this room tour of my home office...

Some items have been gifted

It’s finally happened! I have my very own finished home office! I’m sat at my wall-to-wall DIY desk as we speak, uploading tons of photos to this blog post and I can’t wait to show you everything in this room tour of my home office…

It’s been nearly three since I first stepped into the box room of our first ‘fixer upper’ home and claimed it as my own. I started stripping off the woodchip wallpaper about two and a half years ago, and that’s where the fun started! If you’re interested to see just how grim the 80s wallpaper and neon green paintwork looked before I decorated, you can check out the ‘before’ photos here.

It’s been a slow process as I’ve been working in the space for most of the time while I was trying to decorate so the home office makeover has been a task for evenings and weekends only. After hanging my bargain £1 per roll gold star wallpaper, and laying some leftover laminate flooring, I moved in with an old teak desk that I found ‘free to a good home’ at the side of the road and just started working.

So there have been many dusty moments while we put up shelves in the alcove and when we drilled the old fireplace wall to add brass magazine racks. Things we’re much less dusty when I used my hardwall takker (a great bit of kit that keeps the dust contained) to hang up some gorgeous artwork by local artists.

I now have a gallery wall beside my desk that I can glance up at and feel inspired. There’s a letterpress ‘Good Vibes!’ print and an original hot pink cowboy boot lino print, both by artist Hannah Farthing. The gold foil star sign print is by Crafty Cats Art on Etsy. You may recognise the sewing machine original ink drawing from somewhere…

It’s my blog logo! It was created by local artist Unruly Print, who can be commissioned to create artworks for any occasion. He also painted the biscuit watercolour that hangs on my pink wall, just below the ‘Look Up At The Stars’ print – another Hannah Farthing letterpress original.

All the artworks mean a lot to me as they’ve been created by talented local designers and artists, and some have been given to me by my husband as a special gift for my birthday or Christmas. But one is particularly special as my best friend stitched it for me. This cross stitch artwork depicts my little vintage caravan and reminds me of the years that my caravan served as my home office in the garden.

But now, I have a proper wall-to-wall fitted desk to work at, rather than just a caravan table. We DIYed the desk a couple of months ago using an unusual gloss-coated MDF sheet that we bought as an off-cut from our local timber yard for just £15. It was the only way I could find a piece of worktop long enough to stretch from wall to wall and we attached it to the wall using timber batons and the cheapest screw-on legs from Ikea at just £2.50 each.

I installed my sit-stand desk by Varidesk on top of the DIY worktop and now I can easily change my working position as needed. The desk keeps my laptop (that I sometimes use as a monitor with a keyboard) at the right height for me to work at, whether I’m sitting down or working standing up.

Lighting-wise, I opted for desk lamps from Iconic Lights. The got the duck-egg blue lamp a couple of years ago and the pink one is a recent addition and 10% of each sale of the Oxie Table Lamp in pink goes directly to the CoppaFeel charity. I like the scandi-style wooden stands on both of these lamps, which coordinate with the trim around my desk perfectly.

I also added a pink and white LED neon ‘Hello’ sign above my desk and it makes me happy to work in the pink glow! The little shelf below the sign is one of those Ikea spice racks – but I found this one brand new in my local Barnardo’s charity shop when I was upcycling secondhand storage for my office.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you’ll know how much I like globes and maps so I couldn’t resist this mini globe is actually a pencil sharpener that I got from Prezzybox when I was ordering some personalised glittery pink pencils with ‘Cassiefairy.com’ printed on them!

As you can see in the photo above, I’ve used a scarf hanger as a make-shift geometric noticeboard, which only cost me £1.99 from B&M. There’s a little more lighting on top of my storage unit, in the form of a string of fairylights. My husband got this battery-powered star marquee light for me for Christmas a couple of years ago but the lights have since stopped working. No problem – I popped them out of the back and replaced them with some more fairy lights. Sorted!

The small jug with the pink cactus in it was crafted by local maker Olivia Jeffries and I bought the fern as my first ‘try to keep it alive’ plant for my office. So far, so good, and the spider plant is thriving (as all spider plants do). Thank goodness that my collection of cacti are okay to fend for themselves! I’ve just planted a tiny baby succulent into a new gold-tone pot beside my sewing machine, that I bought from local ceramicist Claire Knight at Fram Makers Market.

An absolute essential for my office is my subtle pink telephone. I found this retro design on the Red Candy website, where I also bought my brass magazine racks and some frames for my artwork. It’s a Wild and Wolf design and has been reduced in the sale so that was the ideal time to invest! My little ‘Grl Pwr’ note pad was bought brand new from the Zest charity shop in Ipswich. And there’s another one of the pencils from the box of 12 I had personalised.

My brother bought me this ‘Little Miss Hugs’ mug and it’ the one I use every day for my mid-morning tea break with BBC Radio 2’s Pop Master. My grey cork notebook is another personalised item that I found at PrezzyBox. It’s 100% sustainable and 100% recycleable and comes in 2 different colourways. I chose to have it personalised as my ‘thrifty ideas’ note book so that I can keep DIY projects and money-saving blog post ideas all in one place.

My shelves are actually storage cubes designed for kid’s rooms from Vertbaudet that I previously had in my caravan office. I added some white card boxes from Wilko to fill the non-cupboard sections of the storage unit. I’ve also used two metal filing cabinets from Ikea under my desk and that’s pretty much all the storage I need.

My sewing chair is an old Lloyd Loom woven chair that bought for under £5 from a car boot sale and I printed the fabric with iron-on transfer paper – check out my DIY guide for this tropical chair project if you’re interested in trying the technique for yourself. My office swivel chair was a marked-down bargain corner find from Ikea, which I gave a mini makeover with a new seat pad and cover refresh.

If you’ve read this far, thanks very much! I know it’s a lot of info all in one blog post but I’m just so excited to have finally completed my home office makeover that I want to share it ALL with you. It’s been years in the making so there has been a lot to tell you about! That’s all for now but do ask in the comments below if you see something in my photos and are wondering where it’s from and I’ll try to remember haha!

PIN IT FOR LATER..!

Some items in this blog post have been gifted to me and the pink links indicate a gifted product, affiliate link or information source. All thoughts and opinions in this post are based on my own experience and I am not responsible for your experience 🙂

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Cassie is a freelance writer with a Masters degree in Lifestyle Promotion Studies and is trained in Personal Money Management. She loves to ‘get the look for less’ so regularly shares thrifty-living advice, DIY interior design ideas and low-cost recipes on her blog.

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