home office redo | a design collaboration

My sister asked me a few weeks ago to help her redo her home office. I was so excited and admittedly a little nervous. My sister has a great interior decorating eye. Do you know people like this? Her home is beautiful. She can find just the right stuff for just the right place. So I better not screw this up! {She never said that, but I said that to myself!} I took the offer and she and I will collaborate on this project together. My head is spinning with ideas. We’ll be looking for some budget decorating finds but mostly we want to create as much of this space on our own. So we’ll be doing a lot of diy design projects – which I’m so excited about!

We pinned and cut out a bunch of ideas for inspiration – check out my pinterest board here. And then we put a design board together. Bear with us, we’re not interior decorators but it’s some thing we love to do! Here’s the design board so far:

I’d call her style classic and traditional with a bit of whimsy and nautical. We’ll keep this style but adapt it for a home office – which will not only be hers – but also a place for her three kids (15, 14 and 11 years) to work. The room already has beautiful hardwood floors, the walls are painted a warm, rich beige {Benjamin Moore Lenox Tan} and we’ll keep a jute and black trimmed rug. I had tab top curtains made from sheets a long time ago – and we thought these would work well as decorative window treatments. We’ll use these elements with the color palette of dark red, beige, ivory and robin’s egg blue {my favorite!}. For furniture, we’ll be keeping her two matching black desks, a black leaning book shelf, a black decorative hanging shelf, a robin’s egg blue accent table, along with a large cork board and a few other decorative frames and wall art.

New design projects will include: repainting an old, tan wicker chest in a two-tone red and black color palette, stenciling one wall in a ivory quatrefoil pattern, adding some embellishments to an existing ivory parsons chair, and decoupage a wooden tray. We’ll do LOTS of custom wall art {I’ve been wanting to paint a large ampersand like this one from Target}, create some fun initial artwork, add background color patterns to the black hanging shelf, design some creative storage and shelving, add some lighting, and create fun desk and office accessories. I’m giddy!

I think it will be beautiful.

I’ll keep you posted on the progress and show you all the diy projects along the way…