It’s that time. School is over this week, and the urge to delve into a project has hit me. Hard. Our office/closet/dressing room/greenhouse is dark and starting to look a little too hoarder-ish for my liking, so it’s the natural outlet for my makeover mania. There’s just so much stuff in there. And did I mention it’s dark? We painted it a dark, dark grey when we first moved in because we just couldn’t take the crazy yellow walls and ceiling. Yep, both the walls and the ceiling were this color when we moved in:

I wonder who originally painted the room, stepped back, said to themselves, “Nailed it” and walked away with a self-satisfied smile on their face.

Needless to say, we painted the room ASAP and it was definitely a step up. But now I’m kind of over it. The room doesn’t get much natural light and because it has to serve so many functions, it’s filled to the brim and feels suffocating. Only one way to fix that: makeover! But first, want to see the offending room? (All images Instagrammed to make them less upsetting.) First up, the view from the door:

Hmm..from here you can see the ‘office’ portion of the room. Mike works from home a few days a week, so he needs a functional office set-up: desk, good chair, printer, filing cabinets etc. What we do not need, however, is the piles of grad school notebooks and a box of who-knows-what sitting under the desk. Also of note, the desk and the chair are on long-term loan from Mike’s company and thus cannot be painted/spruced/etc. Bummer.

Stepping to the right of the desk, we have more files and the laundry/backpack/garbage can area. I can’t stand how beautiful it is. Not. That white glow on the cabinets? Well, of course, that comes from our greenhouse area on the shelves opposite the desk:

Also on the book cases: textbooks, receipts, DVDs/CDs and a weak attempt at accessorizing. Needs big time help. To the left of the shelves is the scarf holder I made, which hints at the next section of the room:

The closet! And here it is with the curtains open:

Now, I absolutely love my closet. It’s essentially a quarter of the room blocked off by curtains, and is totally functional for my stuff. It could use some editing and re-folding, but overall that is the one thing about this room I love.

So there are the raw ingredients we’re working with for this makeover. I think the main goal with this project will be to lighten up the room, and get some better hidden storage so that it’s not so visually overwhelming. The layout will be tricky because we have a lot of large elements that can only fit in so many places. I think a little mood board and layout planning is in order. Any suggestions for our office/dressing room/closet/greenhouse room?