This year has been an interesting one for us all. The news in March that we were to work from home created some interesting space challenges for Ryan and I. My office became the guest bedroom, where we had a queen bed and large dresser, and not room for much else. Someone gave us a small Ikea secretary desk, which tied me over for some time. It was broken and when open took up a lot of space without a good layout for me. I needed a more comfortable office space, and we went to work redesigning the guest room into my new office.
First, we ditched the bed frame and storage dresser. We decided to get a sofa bed in case family or friends can visit again in the future I wanted something light and inexpensive and that I could also work on, and we went with the Ikea Holmsund Sleeper Sofa. This bed has some storage underneath that holds blankets, sleeping pillows and a mattress pad to soften up the sleep.
If you don’t have an Ikea nearby, this Target option has been on and off sale for half price and is a great bargain alternative.
We had a lot of storage in the original dresser, and needed to maintain some level of storage for towels and other random things. We decided to use two dressers as the base, and Ryan created a desk top to use as my workspace. More details on how we built the desk are here. We thought about hanging a TV to use as a computer monitor, and may at some point when we need this space for guests. I didn’t want the handles for the Hemnes dressers, so we dressed them up with these bar handles without needing to patch or drill new holes. The chair is from Pottery Barn, and is a higher task chair to compensate for the desk being slightly higher than other desks. If at any time we want to convert this from a desk, we can move the dressers together and either cut or build a new countertop, or we kept the original dresser tops that we can attach.
I wanted to showcase some of the art my Littles have made me over the years. The floating shelf is great for swapping out different art pieces they make. This is a similar one to what we bought.
This room needed some green, and I purchased low maintenance succulents to place on the desk and on my wall. These little round vases hold three mini succulents each, along with some river stones I’ve had for years and was able to repurpose. Who doesn’t love hanging wall plants?
We added some lighting to the desk, which I use regularly instead of the overhead can lights. The ones on my desk are from Crate and Barrel, but these are very similar alternative.
Definitely an improvement on what we had and helps make the work from home situation much more comfortable.
