As I mentioned in the previous post, Grace's room was previously a guest room turned holding room. She can officially add "Home Office" to that beautiful chalkboard door of hers, as it is now a super functional space for her to work from as well as a serene haven for her lucky visitors.
When I arrived, many of the furniture pieces were already set in place.
That made it easy to get right to work sorting, purging and then shopping for organizers to make her workspace super functional with a side of pretty.
Because Grace had a closet within the room for her sewing, gift wrap and craft supplies, the space around her desk was designated to daily necessities for list making, blogging, creating client designs and working on projects.
When it comes to organizing desk drawers, my "go-to" organizers are the acrylic set from The Container Store. I love these organizers because you can play around with placement and they are easy to clean. I also adore that you can line the drawers with decorative papers or fabrics and still see the pretty through the dividers.
Grace had quite an abundance of office supplies (don't we all?), so she selected all of her most used and favorites and said goodbye to the rest. I may have decked out her tape roll with leopard print washi tape...
Her desk top holds a display box with items she uses most frequently, along with a tray to hold a stack of stationery and a pad of paper for notes and lists.
Each side of her desk is flanked by gorgeous white lacquered shelves which she paired with gold foil frames.
She has a lot of room to grow with these shelves should she need to expand in the future. We also opted for acrylic organizers to give her versatile, timeless storage that will last for many years to come.
When it came to filing her paperwork, we purchased two desktop file boxes, one for blog items and another for clients. I gave the label holders a little gold leaf Rub n' Buff and they looked like right at home.
For Grace's guests, she centered a simple wooden bed frame on the wall, and covered it with beautiful textiles.
Just outside of the closet is where more daily crafting items live. How amazing is that ombre set of drawers? I am a fan.
The drawers hold things like wallpaper samples, craft paper, glues, markers, paper punches, labeling supplies, etc... The small drawers keep each category fairly orderly.
Perched on top of the set of drawers are acrylic organizers that hold Grace's personal business cards, as well as the ones she has collected from others over the years.
And that rounds out the tour of how a guest room was married to a home office.
So now let's take a quick peek at how we handled the closet space. (Forgive the image quality - a setting sun plus closet lighting plus lack of equipment made the space a bit of a challenge to photograph).
After the closet was completely empty, we gave the walls a super quick white-wash treatment, by dry brushing white paint over the tired and orange wall planks. We also painted the floor in a deep gray color, and the combination of those two quick actions instantly freshened up the entire area. I always love a blank slate!
Based on the sorted categories, the goal was to create a gift wrap station, a fabric and sewing station, and a place to corral and conceal all of the "other" miscellaneous items we came across. Oh! And Grace's ribbon inventory was off-the-hook! So many amazing, beautiful trims, embellishments and ribbons in every color of the rainbow! Bins, drawers and containers full of ribbon rolls and strands were discovered during the "clean-out" phase. She was really excited to be reunited with many of her favorites.
Every last strand was separated, re-rolled and sorted.
And every last piece of fabric was folded.
For the gift wrap cart, we used this one from Bed, Bath & Beyond (20% off coupon love), and swapped out the canvas bins for prettier woven options (from Target).
The first basket holds gift wrapping embellishments, scissors, pens, tags, stickers, etc... while the bottom basket holds gift boxes and tissue paper.
The top of the cart came with a few divided areas, one which was perfect for Grace's stack of stationery and cards. I added a few extra drawer dividers to the cart as well, to organize the remaining tags and labels.
To hold all of the fabric piles, I cut a piece of cardboard to create a folding template (just a simple rectangle that fit inside of the cubby shelves). I laid out each piece of fabric and re-folded them using the template.
I then placed the fabrics within the cubbies by color family.
The cubbies are part of the Kallax line from IKEA, which we embellished with gold foiled hardware on the corners along with decorative casters found at an architectural salvage shop.
The top of the fabric cubbies holds Grace's sewing machine and supplies, which she can easily tote to her office to work on a project.
Grace had purchased a makeup caddy from HomeGoods, but I confiscated it and told her it would serve her much better for hew sewing items.
All of her shorter strands of ribbon were strung by color on her vintage peg rack. Rolls of ribbon were placed on dowels within the gift wrap cart while the remaining ribbons were wrapped and clipped with clothing pins and placed in a basket behind her cabinet doors.
For the remaining trim and embellishments, I found some sock organizers at Target that were a perfect solution for her two built-in drawers.
Inside of the cabinet, we lined the shelves with woven baskets to streamline and conceal the remaining items. The baskets hold everything from gifts that Grace purchases throughout the year, to stamps and ink pads, and even cans of spray paint. I selected baskets from Target to be sure we could find enough that all matched, little did we know we would have to go to about six different Targets to find them all.
The labels holders were also found at the architectural salvage shop, and were attached using blunt screws paired with a bolt backing (to prevent items from getting caught on the backside).
The backsides of the cabinets were painted with chalkboard paint and cork tiles were attached so Grace has a place to pin up favorites from magazines, while keeping the visual clutter hidden behind doors.
And that is literally a wrap! Whew! Let's now celebrate the once messy closet turned super organized closet! Heck, let's dance around and get giddy about the entire transformation that took place over the course of a couple of days.
This will go down in history as one of my favorite projects ever. Not just because the results are so fantastic and her spaces are functional and fabulous, but also because of the time I got to spend with Grace. Working on projects like these with a friend makes it so much fun, it never once felt like a chore. Great music found on Pandora, daily coffee runs, stories filled with tears and laughter, road trips, Sarah Richardson, high fives, Target strolls, sushi and wine were all keys to making this room a success in the short time we had together. They are also just some of the many memories that I took home with me when I left the great state of Texas.
Working on spaces with others is something I have always wanted to dabble in, and this was definitely a learning experience I was able to grow from. My fingers are now crossed that more talks that start out as "Wouldn't it be great if...?" turn into "We did it!".
Check out the beginning of the room transformation on Grace's blog here and here. And part one of the project here.
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