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Updating the Cloffice

August 31, 2012

Last fall during the Roomspiration Party, I hosted the Closet and Nooks portion and I revealed my cloffice in the new house but it was never quite finished.  I have finally added a few things and today I’m showing you the updates.

The Cloffice in my first house was a big hit and I really loved the use of space.  This is when I first fell in love with stenciling as well.

When we moved one of the first things I missed was my cloffice as this kept happening on the kitchen counter and I can’t stand piles and mess on my counters.  Also, how can you find anything when you aren’t sure where it even is?

 

So that is how one of the first projects in this house was making a cloffice out of our front entryway closet.

Which then led to building a shelf with hooks in the hallway to the right so guests had a place to hang their coats. Here’s a little before and after shot of the hallway with the coat shelf.

Looking the opposite way down the hall.  You can read more about the entryway updates here.

Here is the after of the front closet, I did recently update the center of the wall by adding a piece of artwork that we’ve had for a few years.  Our friends who are in the antique world bought us this for a house warming gift.  I love the gold frame and colors, so pretty.  The wall is stenciled with Martha Stewart Precious Metals paint in Hazel using a Wallovers Stencil.  The wall color is Galapagos Turquoise by Benjamin Moore.  The desk and chair were a Craigslist find.  In the drawers are nice file folders for bills and paperwork, places for miscellaneous cords for the computers and i-pods, note cards, envelopes and all the other fun office type stuff.  The side wall has a nice pocket folder area where I keep our home binder and some folders that I use often.

 

 

The ceiling is covered in barn wood that I was able to rip off of an old falling apart barn, thanks to my friend Jenny.  We had a great time using our tools and rusty nails.   The light fixture is from IKEA.

 

I love when we can turn spaces that maybe aren’t being used to their full potential into something useful and functional.  The grand total for this space was around $225 give or take a few dollars.  Not bad for an organized area to pay bills, charge your laptop and i-pads, store all that miscellaneous stuff like envelopes, paperclips, stamps, bills, kids school papers and pens.

Have you turned any of your closets into offices, sewing nooks, craft areas or something else?

Linking up here:

By 13 Comments Filed Under: cloffice

Roomspiration Closets & Nooks

October 3, 2011

Hello and welcome to the Closets & Nooks Portion of Roomspiration!  I’m so glad you are here and I can’t wait to look at all the fun stuff that you will share today!  Today I’m going to share my new Cloffice with you that I just completed last tonight.  I shared my first cloffice on my blog back in January of this year.

 We recently moved and I was missing my old Cloffice for all the papers, bills and stuff  that didn’t have a home anymore.  I found it a temparory home in the kitchen but I didn’t find this very attractive to look at or helpful when looking for a missing receipt.

 I knew right away that a cloffice was in our future and I had the perfect place for it, the front closet.  After a bit of convincing, the hubby agreed we could turn the closet into a cloffice.  Let the fun begin!  The only obstacle was finding somewhere for our games and vacuums, guests to hang their coats when visiting our home.  We completed the entryway a few weeks ago and you can check out that post to see what we ended up doing for the guest coat dilemma. 

Here are the before pictures of the front closet.

One of the first things I did was find my inspiration photo for the colors of the cloffice on Pinterest. 

I then tried to create an Olioboard  to help me visualize what I wanted.  I have not used Olioboard much, as you can tell from the picture below but I will definitely be using it again! 

.  After I had an idea of what I liked, I needed to find a stencil.  There are many choices out there for stencils and you can even make your own which I did in the last cloffice.  I was sent a stencil to try out from Wallovers and I chose the Alyma’s Allover stencil.

It was hard to choose because I also really loved many stencils, including Decodence. 

   I recently stenciled my powder room with a stencil from Hobby Lobby and it was quite trying.  There were little triangles in the corner for lining up the stencil and it worked for the most part but I struggled with it many times.  Wallovers uses the repeating patterns in the stencil instead of the little triangles in the corner.  You can see the pattern at the top, sides and bottom of the stencil.  When you reposition the stencil it lines up nicely and makes it really easy to stencil a wall.

Wallovers also sent me the Topper Stencil which made doing the area near the ceiling very easy.  Here is the hubby figuring out how the Topper works. 

The corners are definitely the hardest part of stenciling.  I chose to make the main wall the focal point of the cloffice and leave the sidewalls unstenciled. 

I used a foam roller from Hobby Lobby for rolling on the stencil paint.  For the wall color, I used Benjamin Moore Regal Select in Galapagos Turquoise.  The BM paint was expensive but I thought well worth the $50 I spent.  The paint was thick and rolled on smoothly without splattering.  I did two coats but after one coat I was amazed at the coverage.  I have tried many different paints but this one is by far my favorite!  BM did not pay me or compensate me in anyway for this review, just my personal experience with this paint.  For the stencil color I decided to try using the Precious Metals paint in Hazel from the Martha Stewart line at Home Depot. A quart of paint was about $18 and we used less than half to do the wall in the cloffice.  I rolled two coats on the stencil before peeling off the stencil and moving it to the next spot.  It was hard to wait the few minutes in between coats but I think it looks great and I’m glad I waited instead of rushing ahead.
I love the way the wall turned out and would definitely use a Wallovers stencil again!  The stencil arrived quickly, was not flimsy and was easy to use!  I’m so excited to announce that  Wallovers is offering all my readers a 10% discount on any order now through October 31st! So what are you waiting for, head on over and check out their great selection of stencils. Use the code hydrangea when you order and if you have problems let me know. 

Now for the best part, the after pictures!  Some of the pictures are from last night and though I really wanted some natural sunlight, it just wasn’t in the cards for me.

The finished wall!

 The ceiling before hubby installed the light. 

Here it is with the pendant light.

 The barn boards on the ceiling came from a barn my friend Jenny & I destroyed ripped apart, you can read more about that here.  My sweet hubby did the barn wood ceiling for me.  The pendant light on the ceiling is the Kristaller from IKEA.  The desk lamp is from the old Cloffice.

The gold picture frame is from Monica over at Read My Walls.  Read My Walls has a new product line that is coming out and it’s adorable. You may have seen frames that look similar in style over at Organic Bloom. Well, the style of the frames is all these two companies have in common. Read My Walls is selling these frames at a fraction of the cost that Organic Bloom sells them at. Plus, Organic Bloom only sells these frames to professional photographers. Well, I am not a pro and you probably aren’t either. Thank you to Monica for allowing anyone to own these stunning frames. Hey, that’s not all…Read My Walls also is giving you the option to buy them unfinished. That means, we can get them EVEN CHEAPER and match them to our home’s own color scheme. What a great option! Last but not LEAST…Monica is giving away one these beautiful frames during the month of October! Who doesn’t like things for FREE? So, hop on over to see what new products Monica is making and watch for the frame giveaway details!

The clear file folder holders are from Target along with the file folders and the binder. I am waiting for the pink file folders to come back in at my Target but the blue ones don’t look too bad for now.

The letters which represent my blog name are from Michaels and are painted Coral Reef from Sherwin Williams. The white board/cork board combo frame also came from Michaels. The magazine holders are from IKEA.

The desk was a CL find on Thursday last week. The original desk did not work out for the cloffice but that’s ok, I think this desk is a great fit and I didn’t have to strip, sand and paint it. The seller’s of the desk gifted me with the chair when they dropped off the desk. I recovered the chair with some fabric I found for $3 at Hancock Fabrics. The chair could use some TLC but I simply ran out of time this weekend.
Here’s one more before and after for you.

We are still debating if we will up doors on the cloffice but for now, we are going to leave it open. Maybe it will be a good motivator to keep it clean!   I am also still on the lookout for some different accessories for the desk and maybe something else for the walls.  Stay tuned, this isn’t the last of the cloffice!
I  hope you’ve enjoyed the tour of my new little space.  Now that I’ve shared my closet turned office, it’s time for you to share your closets and nooks!  Please link up below.  The only thing I ask is that you please put the Roomspiration button in your blog post.

Roomspiration 
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It would be great if you stopped at a few other links and met someone new today! Thanks for linking up and stopping by!  Don’t forget to visit the other great Roomspiration Rooms and it’s not too late to link up, all links will be open until Oct. 14th!

Entryways – Abode Love
Living Rooms – View Along the Way
Bathrooms – Homemaker on a Dime
Guest Bedrooms – DIY by Design
Craft Rooms -  Family Brings Joy
Dining Rooms – Involving Color
Nurseries – a la mode

 Master Bedrooms - Just a Touch of Gray

By 35 Comments Filed Under: Before and After, cloffice, projects, roomspiration

Cloffice Inspiration

August 12, 2011

The New Place has a lot more room than the Colonial which is great with four kids and the hubby working from home. We have doubled the amount of bathrooms here and increased the bedrooms by 2. The one thing I really miss from the Colonial is the cloffice. The hubby has his work office but we don’t want to mix work with pleasure so we need another space for all our papers, bills, owners manuals, etc.
I have convinced the hubby we won’t use the front closet and that it should be the cloffice. So here is some inspiration I’ve pinned for the cloffice. Instead of just building some shelves and using a deeper shelf for the desktop I think I want a real desk. I am really liking the wood on these but then I am always drawn to the white too!

And this time instead of tracing the stencil on the wall myself, I think I might actually buy one. Not sure what one but these caught my eye.

I think I might have already found a desk on CL and it’s only $15!  I’m sure the hubby loves that we are starting date night off with a trip to look at a desk.  Or maybe he really does, it’s only $15 and all he has to do is load and unload it and I’ll take care of the rest.
I also am working on something fun that will be happening in mid-September so stay tuned for more details!!!!

By 2 Comments Filed Under: cloffice, newplace

The Cloffice Reveal

February 3, 2011

 Here it is, my first big room reveal on this blog.  I wish I had more photography knowledge for better pictures but I don’t, yet.  So if you wouldn’t mind extending some grace for that, I think you’ll enjoy what I have to share!

Well after a few weeks of painting, tracing, painting some more, shopping, organizing tons of papers, putting together a chair and a file cabinet, installing shelving, hooking up electronics and labeling everything, I think the Cloffice is ready for it’s big reveal! I’m not totally jiving on the placement of some things yet so I might play around with it some more but I really need to move on and get other projects finished up as well. We also did not add electrical outlets or a permanent light fixture to the cloffice because hopefully next summer we will be tearing this down along with the bathroom behind it to open up the  playroom and kitchen eating area to each other and make one big room back here.  We will add a cloffice, powder room and main floor laundry in  the hallway and other closet area that see in a picture below.

Remember this is what it looked like just a few short weeks ago, this is just so embarrassing:

And in the playroom was where we had our “office.” I dare you to find a Target receipt or bill in that mess and pay no attention the window that needs to be trimmed out, it’s on the list!

Even the bubs was embarassed!

Here it is, almost all cleaned out…..Mr.A really needs to find a home for his guitar!

This is what the dining room table looked like while waiting for all the papers and office junk to be organized:

I painted, traced and painted some more.   You can read more about the wall stencil post here.

We finally got around to the end product, new flooring, painted and stenciled walls, new shelves and here it is, the big reveal! 

Ok, open those doors and let’s see it:

Here is the before and after, once more:

And here was my inspiration picture from Country Living, not bad huh?  I would love to have a cute drop down chandelier and some globes but I was too cheap to buy a globe from the store for $40.  I’m hoping to find one at Goodwill for $10 or less.

I tried to think of all we purchased to make this happen so here it goes:
The cute little file cabinet was from IKEA $40
The white storage boxes were also from IKEA and were $7 for 2= $14
The chair was from IKEA and was about $20
The garbage basket was from IKEA $3
The silver office stuff and file folders are all from Target for $45
The shelving and 1×2 boards underneath were about $30
The tow hydrangea pictures I printed out for free at http://www.graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/ and the frames for the pictures were from Target’s dollar section  for a total of $2.
I repainted the bulletin board with silver craft paint for $1.35
The white basket we have as an inbox for receipts was $4.83 on clearance at Target
The lamp was on clearance at Shopko for only $8 (the original price was $79.99)
The cute little white flower pot/jug with  the flowers I had already was from IKEA  for $7
The little clear clock was from IKEA for $1
I also had to buy some more paint for the walls, I ran out, so $18 for paint as well

Grand Total:   $194.18 

The price of having a place to put all our receipts, papers, bills, printer, etc. and being organized…..   PRICELESS!!!!

Thank you to Traci at Beneath My Heart for the closet organizing challenge, Jen at I Heart Organizing for the Paper Challenge help,  The Graphics Fairy Queen for the pictures in my cloffice and living room. Also to Emily at  Jones Design Company for providing the stencil and tutorial on the painted wallpaper!  Finally, the biggest thank you, to my partner in crime design, Mr.A, who lets me cook up these crazy projects and does his best to go with the flow and helps make my projects a reality!!!!  He laid all the stick tiles and installed the shelving, put together the chair, the file cabinet, the eletronic equipment, organized all the papers and survived a four hour shopping experience in IKEA with four children!!

You can also check out my recent Pantry Makeover, Mudroom Makeover and Kitchen Remodel.  Check back soon as I get ready to reveal the playroom makeover! 

I’m linking up at the following places:

HookingupwithHoH






http://thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com/2012/01/office-deets-and-show-off-yours.html

This remodel is being featured on the following blogs:

                                                                     

By 48 Comments Filed Under: Before and After, cloffice, colonial, projects

Cloffice Wall

January 26, 2011

Well if you recall, a few weeks ago the hall closet looked like this:

We decided to make it into a “cloffice” and now it’s turned into a giant playroom, cloffice, flooring project, which happens with every project, it grows bigger and bigger!
A few weeks ago I came across Emily’s post over at Jones design company and fell in love with her “painted walllpaper.” I instantly knew what the back of my cloffice would look like. Head over here for the tutorial! Here is my wall, just waiting for the shelves to be installed, hopefully tonight! It took me forever to trace the stencil on the wall, I think I used an entire pink pearl eraser before I had it just right. The easy part was painting it! Stay tuned for the finished project!

By 2 Comments Filed Under: cloffice, colonial, painting

2011 House Goals or Wishful Thinking?

January 7, 2011

The Nester just posted on her blog 2011 Home Goals for her home. It’s so nice to see other bloggers who have beautiful homes still have those spaces that aren’t perfect and have places that they would like to work on.
Mr.A and I sat down last night to decide what project we were going to tackle next so we could figure out the budget and all the boring stuff that I don’t like figuring out.   If it was up to me, we’d just dive right in and figure all that out later. Good thing Mr.A is around to keep me somewhat grounded.
So I am going to post our goals for our home this year as well and hopefully by December 2011 I can look back and see some of these accomplished!

You can also check out my UPDATED HOUSE GOALS  posting to see how I did on my list!

Install the dining room corner cabinets
Paint the cabinets
Paint over the brown on the bottom and possibly a new color on the top as well
Reupholster the dining room chairs.
I’m still not sure if I’m going to keep the table cherry or repaint it, possibly white.
Another thought is adding some board and batten to the wall but that might be too much with the cabinets, we’ll have to see as we go!

Next on the list is the hall closet/playroom.

With four children we have a lot of games, puzzles, coloring books, craft type stuff.  This closet is usually a little more organized but with Christmas presents combined with Christmas break and a toddler that loves to get into stuff, the closet is looking less than stellar.  I’m embarrassed to put this picture out there but I’m just keeping it real.

We hope to turn this closet into an office, like this one from Country Living:

Which leads to the playroom and all it’s glory.  We have two closets, one is pictured below, looking a mite bit scary.  Again, just keeping it real, it’s 11pm and I don’t have the energy to make it look pretty right now. 

Install shelving units in the two closets for toys, games and playroom crap stuff
Move the bookcase/shelving units out of the playroom
Replace the carpeting with some type of flooring that is not carpeting  as the dog thinks it’s fun to pee on carpet
Paint the doors white or replace them with white doors
Install window trim and paint the trim around both windows, a project left over from this summer when we replaced the windows in the playroom
Repaint the playroom and get rid of the curbside couch, make it have more of a hang out/kid friendly feel to it

Rip out the desk between the two closets and make a cute little bench seat

 

On a side note, I think I clean this desk off about once a week but really it’s just a catchall and the kids’ computer area which doesn’t get a lot of love during the week.  Don’t judge me, k? 
Moving on from that scary mess……

When we bought this house, it came with a lovely white and green diamond patterned tile entryway floor.  It was as slick as ice and if you made the mistake of stepping on it with wet shoes, you were in for a wild ride!
One day while using my floormate I hit the tile and a little green diamond popped up off the floor.  I was able to pick up almost all the tiles by hand without any effort.  A few actually were grouted to the hardwood floor but about 80% came up with ease.  The floor has remained like this for about a year and a half now.

I would love to refinish this but that might have to wait until we refinish the living room and dining room floor as well.  So, not sure what we’ll do right here but I’d like something done so it doesn’t look so unfinished.

This is it for now, I have a ton of landscaping that I would like to accomplish this summer as well but it’s kind of hard to show pictures of what I’d like to redo because everything is covered in snow!

There are more things I could put on here, like both bathrooms needing makeovers,  main floor laundry, figuring out what we are doing with our bedroom sitation (3 girls in one bedroom is just the beginning), knocking out the wall between the kitchen and the playroom which then would mean no office closet, refinishing the hardwood floors on the main floor, I could keep going but I’ll just stop there!

I love my home but sometimes I feel like I”m always trying to improve it without stopping and just letting things be for a while.  I don’t have a Country Living worthy house nor will I probably ever.  What I want most is a home that is safe, comfortable, inviting, warm, welcoming and inspiring.  A place for my family to think back on fondly when they are grown.   A place where they bring their teenage friends to hang out, their children to visit in and where they will always call HOME!  Unless of course I get the bug to move in a few years.  ;)

Thanks for checking it out and I’d love to hear from you!

I’m linking up at The Nesting Place.

Check out my UPDATED HOUSE GOALS  posting to see how I did on my list!

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By 3 Comments Filed Under: Blogging Fun, cloffice, colonial, dining room, playroom