Fall 2018 One Room Challenge Week 1: Home Office Renovation

I’m so excited to be guest participant in the One Room Challenge Fall 2018 series, sponsored by Better Homes and Gardens! For this challenge, I’ve chosen to make over my dark and dreary home office in just six weeks. Are you ready to get started and see what’s going on so far in my office for my One Room Challenge Week 1?

About the One Room Challenge

During the One Room Challenge Fall 2018 series, 20 chosen, featured designers (and many other guest participants such as myself) have challenged themselves to make over a room in six, short weeks. Each week, bloggers post about their experiences during the renovation. As a result, you can follow along with all of the designers and their renovation journeys in the Fall 2018 One Room Challenge Blog. Here, you can check back on the Color Joy Interiors blog as I attempt to renovate my home office area.

Dark, Dreary and Dated Home Office

Now, let’s talk about the current state of my home office. To start, we built our home and moved in 2004. After about a year or so into the home, I decided to claim the second largest bedroom as my home office. Since its location was right in the center of the house on the second floor, I could look out onto our front yard while I worked.

Although it has two windows, and the room gets adequate morning light, it gets very little light the rest of the day. To make matters worse, I chose a shade of dark blue, which makes it appear even darker. At the time, I liked this color for its peaceful and calming effect, inspired by the ocean. On the walls, I have pictures of my honeymoon in Hawaii, some degrees and awards, and some artwork from my two girls. The photo below was taken in the late afternoon. Thus, you can see how dark it gets in here, even with an overhead light: 

A Quick Confession

Now to be fair, my office doesn’t normally look this clean. In fact, my home office has become the unfortunate dumping ground of all of the household’s paperwork. It’s where all of the kids’ art and school papers go. It’s also where magazines, client files, family documents and other such paper clutter lives.  I don’t recommend that you ever let clutter take over a room like I have done in my home office! The room has become such a chaotic mess that I often find myself venturing to other rooms in the house to actually get work done! So enough is enough. As you can see in this photo, I’ve started to take things off of the desk surface area. I am placing them into boxes to keep, donate, recycle or trash:

This is the room during the beginning of the clean-up process. Look at all the books on that shelf! I still have a long way to go to remove all of this clutter. It is going to take some hard decisions.

Giving my Home Office a Fresh Start

As part of the Fall 2018 One Room Challenge, I’m taking back my room and starting fresh, just as I have done with my career. You see, I have spent the past 15 years or so as a marketing consultant for small businesses. However, I lost my passion for that career in my early 40s. Therefore, I started my new business as an Indianapolis interior decorator and home stager this past January. So not only do I need to transform and update my home office, I need to create it to be functional for a completely different type of business. 

Goals for the One Room Challenge Week 1 

So to summarize for the One Room Challenge Week 1, my goals for this home office room makeover include:  

• De-cluttering 15 years worth of paperwork and files
• Updating the colors to reflect and bring more light into the room
• Adding new, lighter furniture and accessories to update the look
• check-circle-oFocusing on functionality and usable creative space for a designer’s work space
• check-circle-oBonus: Allow for overnight guests to stay in the room, if possible (since this office takes the place of our home’s guest room)

As you can see, my office has lots of space. There is even enough room for two desks! But you can see some things piled in the corner, awaiting removal and clean-up.

One Room Challenge Week 1 Checklist

My goal for this week was to just get started in the room, mainly in clearing the clutter. The room has a good foundation: We recently updated the floors with new, wood laminate a few years ago. So a fresh coat of paint and some new furniture will do wonders for this room.

However, there is a lot more on my checklist for this room, including selling this dark and dated furniture. I do love this furniture, but I’m ready for a change. So I plan on selling the set, which is in very good condition. Doing so will allow me to get some much-needed funds to put toward purchasing new furnishings for the room. I highly recommend doing this if you believe that you can’t afford to update a room. Some of my other to-do items for the One Room Challenge this next week include:

• Selling old furniture and curtains, along with a few other household items, to make money to pay for part of the renovation
• Donate unwanted office chairs, books and accessories to Goodwill
• Recycle and shred all old paperwork in the filing cabinets
• check-circle-oEmpty closet full of materials and decide what to keep or store and what to recycle, donate or throw away
• check-circle-oRemove all items from the room and prepare and prep the room to paint
• check-circle-oDevelop a design plan for the home office and start browsing for inspiration online and at furniture stores

One Room Challenge Week 1 Complete! Still so much more to do this week…

Excited for the Challenge

While this One Room Challenge Fall project will be overwhelming, I’m pushing myself to finish. I have wanted to redo this room for months – maybe more than a year. However, other things in life have gotten in the way. Since I’ve always put myself last, it’s time to change and move forward with this new phase of my life and career. I’m excited about the opportunity that the One Room Challenge brings. Most of all, I’m thrilled to know that I have so many other bloggers who will be encouraging me along, and I can be inspired by their transformations, too. So thank you for coming along on this journey with me, blog reader!

Be sure to leave a comment below and tell me if you’re participating too, and how your One Room Challenge Week 1 went for you. If not, let me know if you have any suggestions or ideas on how I could transform this room! I’d love to hear them. Then head on over to the One Room Challenge Fall 2018 blog to see all of the other Week 1 participants!