My Home Office Reveal

Hi All!

Thanks so much for stopping by to the inaugural post and launch of my new website! You may know me from my previous blog called "The Julian Home" where I chronicled the journey of building my current house and making it my own from the ground up.

Well, we've officially been living in the new house now for two years, so I guess it's not so "new", but it's still the Julian home. A lot has changed since then. I had a brief stint in Interior Design school and loved it, but decided that I would rather keep interiors as more of a hobby rather than switch career paths mid-life. So... what's a girl to do when she needs to get back to work and be creative? Why redecorate, of course!

Let's start at the beginning, shall we? This is a photo of my office which was featured on Apartment Therapy in January of this year:

(photo credit: Monique Larroux)

Nice, right? It was filled with some of my favorite things. A zebra hide rug, one of my treasured paintings from a good friend, vintage brass, and smooth black walls which had been painstakingly painted with glossy stripes by me and the hubby. What's not to like?

Okay, I'll tell you. This office is at the front of the house and gets the most light of any room in our home. No matter how much I cleaned, anytime I would look in this room I could see a layer of dust stacked on every solid surface. And that was the other problem. Aside from the drapes and cowhide rug, it was all solid surfaces, which caused the room to have a terrible echo. And an echo is the killer of any telephone conversation in my opinion. Not a good thing for conducting business, that's for sure!

So while I loved the look of the room, it didn't prove to be extremely functional for me. I decided to post this photo one last time on Instagram for posterity's sake, then cobbled together this mood board of my new vision:

Pretty wild, huh? I am nothing if not bold and daring. :) The inspiration for the room was Emily McCarthy's Spot Cheetah Multi wallpaper. She is a graphic designer as well and I have so much respect for her talent, I thought it would be very fitting to have one of her gorgeous textile designs here in my office. I ordered the paper through my friend Steve McKenzie in Atlanta and I was off to the races!

I wanted white walls, but also wanted another solid pop of color in the room, so I chose a flamingo pink because I thought it needed a bit of a Palm Beach chic vibe.

Holy cow that's pink! Those who know me well know that I love painted ceilings, especially if it's a dramatic color. I now have three rooms with painted ceilings in my home and I'd have more if I thought I could get away with it (but my back and shoulders probably won't let me).

Once the ceiling was pink and the walls were bright white (and a few tears were shed for painting over all that hard work), I had the wallpaper installed on the back wall and the room started taking shape. I sold my black cabinetry and purchased the exact same Ikea Besta cabinets but this time in white lacquer. The expanse of white cabinets went a long way to help balance out all the bright color and softened the room a little bit.

Isn't that paper fabulous?!?! At this point the office just started evolving little by little. I wasn't really concerned with following my mood board to the letter, but wanted to be very careful about each piece I put in the room to make sure it didn't start looking like crazy-town in there. I eventually switched out the vintage brass chandelier with a smaller fixture, the brass lamps with a pair of pretty white glass ones, and ordered the tulip table that I would use as my desk. During the months it took to put this room together, I also started creating the graphic pop art portraits that you see here for sale on my site, and they of course heavily influenced the final design of the room. By the time it was all said and done, I ended up with this...

This office is now my official "happy place" and I couldn't be more thrilled with it! It has touches of almost everything I love – faux bamboo, animal print, bright color, natural texture, sleek modern design, and most importantly - art and graphic design! I'm pleased to say I've logged many hours in this office since the redesign and I'm sure I'll be spending many more to come.

Well thanks again for popping over to see what I've been up to and I hope you enjoyed seeing the transformation. I've missed chronicling about exciting things in my world, so watch for updates as I'll be posting about anything from new art projects to interior design and everything in between. Have a great week!