Home Office Makeover and IKEA Karlby Kitchen Worktop Desk Hack

It has been 6 years since we moved our home office into what used to be mine and Adam's bedroom before we had our loft conversion done. And if you've been a reader of my blog for a while you may well remember out first home office room tour - I loved it when we first decorated it. I'd wanted a white desk and modern set up for ages, but 6 years on and it felt like time for something new, a bit different and dare I say it, a little more grown up. 

Adam had seen a bit of an IKEA 'hack' going around online on Reddit using the KARLBY Kitchen worktop as an office double desk top and he really liked it. It took a bit of convincing as I wasn't sure to begin with and worried the walnut colour would be too dark, but I'm so glad I came around to the idea as now that we've done it, I absolutely love it! 

Not only did we change our desk, but we very daringly decided to paint the back wall a bit of a feature wall in dark navy blue (the paint colour is called Keep The Peace by Valspar). We really weren't sure if we'd like it before we did it, but it's made such a difference to the room and has actually given it some character that wasn't there before. I think the fact that it's just the one wall and the rest of the room is still mostly bright and white means it doesn't feel 'too much', plus we've got two windows on that wall so that breaks up the darker colour. 

What I like about the Karlby worktop is that it doesn't seem to be marking like our previous white desk did, or at least, the marks don't show up as much. We've bought two protective black mats for the desk which we have just in front of our monitors with our keyboards on to help protect the top of the desk and they were a great buy! Another thing we did is keep our IKEA Alex Drawers in the middle of the desk, obviously they are super handy to have for storage, but also the drawers stop the desk top from bowing in the middle. 

We also added in a floating ledge shelf (also from IKEA) in between the windows, the colour matches the new desk perfectly and we've styled it with a plant pot (the artificial plant is from IKEA as is the gold pot), a reed diffuser and an 'A' ornament we already had. We have our clock above it and then Adam has framed 3 of the most popular Pokemon cards from his childhood and put those on the wall underneath. The gold theme was a bit of an accident, but I actually think it sits against the navy blue really well. 

Another thing we did in the office was have a MASSIVE declutter, you'll see from the images below of what it looked like before we started, that we had A LOT of stuff behind us and honestly, it was so cluttered and it didn't feel very enjoyable working in the office. It was mostly stock for Adam's business, but somehow we managed to split it all down and organise it a lot better. We cleared out our inbuilt wardrobes and used those and then we found space and storage in other parts of the house. 

Adam also sorted out all of the cables and wires and now you can barely see any wires on show. He installed a shelf underneath his desk which houses our router and also a printer he uses for his business so that we can have a clearer desk. I also painted our radiator which had gone a bit yellow, using some white radiator paint and tidied up the shelves behind us. 

I absolutely love how the office looks now, it's a cosy, clutter-free space to work in and I'm so glad we changed it!

WHAT THE OFFICE LOOKED LIKE BEFORE:

WATCH THE VIDEO:

 

Thank you for reading. 

  Alex xo

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