Planning
Renovating our home office was part of the One Room Challenge that I had participated in the
year 2020 and it was a fun project.
Our home office is right off the entrance and I planned to go for a dark moody room top to
bottom and have some fun in this space. There’s lots of light in this room so I didn’t really mind
the dark color. I got loads of paint swatches from Sherwin Williams to decide on one.
For storage, I definitely wanted to go with the IKEA Ivar cabinets and lots of wall moulding on
one wall and a gallery wall on the other. So, I went for a mixture of traditional, modern and
vintage!
Before you go for IKEA Ivar cabinets, let me tell you that you might face these issues:
- Some cabinets have a gap between the doors and since I am painting it a darker shade so
hopefully won’t look bad. - One of the doors might hit the ground while the other door is fine.
A brief run-down of my home office makeover:
- Built a base with 2x4s
- Installed IKEA Ivar cabinets
- cut and nailed 1-3/8” base cap moulding from @wearewoodgrain in varying sizes
- nailed in 3/4” plywood on top of the IKEA cabinets
- iron on veneer to mask the rough edge of the plywood
- build shelves between cabinets to fill gap
- chunky crown moulding also from woodgrain
- primed and painted with Sherwin Williams Andiron
- decorated with art that I’ve collected over time, meaningful memories for our family and some
heirloom antique pieces!
All the details are saved in “home office highlights”
#wearewoodgrain
Getting to work
I started off by taking off the baseboard. A small tip for you to always score off the caulk with a
painter’s multi tool/utility knife otherwise it will damage your wall.
Then I dry-fitted the 2*4s wood pieces to put the cabinets on top. Before screwing the pieces
together, I marked where the studs are going to come and went ahead screwing it in from font
and back. I also made sure the screws are countersunk, so it sits flush with the wall.
To get rid of the wall texture of our home office, I used hardboard and put wood filler on the
seams. My suggestion would be to always get an angle finder first, measure and then cut the
boards before putting them in, otherwise it might not lie aligned.
Crown molding is hard but if you are planning to do that, and my recommendations are:
- Determine your spring angle first
- Calculate miter and bever angle.
- Get a cheat sheet for how to make your cuts.
Our crown molding is 6 inches wide, I figured out a moulding design and used blue tape to
visualize and a level and marker to pattern out. Then, I cut the pieces for the moulding, every
single wood piece is cut the same way- with 45degree angled on both sides. Next, I secured the
cabinets with screw and had the base boards done. Lots of prep work followed after that like
hammer the nails in that were poking out, put wood filler to fill nail holes and use caulk in the
seams. Once that was done, on top of the cabinets, I used ¾”plywood cut at @loweshomeimprovement
Priming and Painting
Before I started painting our home office, I put primer mainly to seal off the wood filler and for
better adhesion of the paint. My walls are semi-gloss finish, so got the priming done first with a
@homerightps sprayer (Kilz sprayer). I did use a little water to thin itdown; for a 1100 ml
container, I used 100 ml water. Around 10% water should be good.
Now letting you know what I learnt the hard way, so you don’t make the same mistake-
Sanding off an MDF board is not a good idea, as the seams were more obvious on a dark paint. It
became irregular and wasn’t looking good at all. I put aqua coat which also did not help, and I
actually ended up putting a moulding to cover the seams.
Once all the hard work was done, I used an emerald line from Sherwin Williams, I used the color
as recommended and here’s how my home office looks finally.
