Bland Office to Bright Office to Cute Nursery: A Major Transformation

Once upon a time we moved into a small 1947 two bedroom, one bath house. It was cute and just right for our family of two. We set up a quick temporary guest bedroom with a blow up mattress, added a bookshelf and a desk and called it good.

As we spent more time in our little house and more time living in grey and rainy Seattle, we decided we needed to personalize this little house of ours. What better place to start than the small guest room and office? So we found the brightest green paint and even attempted to add a little design trick into the mix by painting the ceiling color further down the wall in order to create a visual trick to the eye to enlarge the tiny little room. It was fun and we loved it. That is until we painted the other bedroom in the brightest blue we could find; until we started thinking of growing our family; until we realized that the house felt super disjointed and so very un-feng shui. 

We even had fun "magic" bookshelves in the old office. Notice my first terrible DIY project...the desk I spray painted black after I found it white for free in my neighbors front yard!

Enter the remodel and turning the little two bed, one bath into a three bed, two bath house that just about doubled the square footage. Enter human being number three. Enter a more cohesive design plan with the same cool grey paint in each bedroom. Amazing how it actually works to fight grey with grey! You know, the grey of Seattle winters (and spring and part of summer and part of fall.....j/k) doesn't seem so bad since our house now has more of a relaxing, "I'm going to design with accent colors" vibe instead of an "oscar the grouch and cookie monster just threw up all over the walls in each bedroom" vibe.

Aside from paint changes, we also redesigned the windows and added updated trim and doors. We had to lose one window now that the view from that window would have looked directly into the new mechanical room instead of out onto the backyard. The other old window would have looked a bit too small all by itself and it would have been in a weird location too, so we boarded that one up and installed a much larger window a little more centrally located.

Now Micah has a nice little nursery with our comfy chair and his comfy chair. A fun little Ikea Expedit clothing/toy/book storage system. Letter and name art on the walls. Oh yeah, it also looks a lot better with trim around the window and doorways and baseboards. The only thing left to do in this room is install a doorknob on the closet door and touch up some paint above the window!

And of course, a little before and after view for your viewing pleasure.