Your home office often needs to be the most thought-out room in the house. For Iris and John Watts, though, it was a cluttered catch-all space that greeted them right off the entryway of their home. Iris wanted someplace to work on her blog, sort mail, and help her son with his art and other projects—and that had the same coastal vibe as the rest of house. So the couple decided to perform a complete DIY overhaul.
Iris already had a good collection of office furniture, so she decided to use what she had on hand to achieve the look of built-ins. She purchased just one tall set of shelves to match one she already owned and arranged them into an L-shaped unit. A few coats of white paint and new hardware unified the mostly mismatched set.
It was important to Iris that her son have his own workstation. She constructed an activity board out of plywood and strips of pine; one side functions as a chalkboard while the other side holds magnets so that her son can display the letters and numbers he's learning. The drop-leaf kitchen table Iris found at Target provides extra space for big projects and can be folded up and out of the way when not in use.
