Ta-da: The office makeover

As promised, I'm posting photos from an office makeover that my friend Marianne and I did recently. A nonprofit organization won the makeover as part of a larger prize.

The space posed a few challenges for me and Marianne (who owns Consignments Ltd.): The office is in an old mill building, and is large (probably 600 square feet). The organization, Options, puts out a newsmagazine, so it needs tables for preparing it for distribution once a month.

It also uses some bulky items, like bins and carts, but had no storage space. Options would also like to hold meetings at the space, and there really was no comfortable spot for hanging out.

Marianne and I did the makeover in about a day. This would not have been possible if Marianne wasn't such a workhorse. (Only not a horse like this: ; more like this: .)

Chances are you don't have a space quite like this, but there are some ideas you can steal:

We bought some office dividers at a business surplus store and put them together to create both a storage room and a wall that would act as an entrance to the large space. The Options sign hangs on one end of the new storage space. (In the Rhode Island area, this is a good place to find business surplus items at very reasonable prices: the aptly named Business Surplus Inc. Rhode Island.)

Along with the bins and carts, we stored a few of the tables and some chairs in the storage area. The tables and chairs can come out once a month, but in the meantime there's room for the lounge we created with sofas from Marianne's store. We added a rug, and few pillows and accessories, and it's a comfy meeting spot. (Check out the little tables I painted, too.)
We used a print they already owned in the bathroom (tip: a big piece of art in a small space makes a really big impact) and the mirror I also painted orange. (I like taking a traditional item like the Chippendale mirror and paining it a bright color to create a funky look.)

Paint is a great tool to use when you've got a lot of space to decorate.

Options already had 25 of the first pages of its newsmagazines mounted on huge poster boards. But only six or so of them were up. They were painted in rainbow colors. So, we painted a bunch more and hung them up, too. Not only did the posters look colorful, but they helped unify the space.

We also hung some curtains (thanks to Marianne climbing a 15-foot ladder), switched out a bookcase for better organization, and a few little odds and ends and we were done.

Done, but too tired for even a glass of wine. And that's saying something.