My Country Farmhouse – The Mood Board – Designing an Office Pt 1

In 2019 I met my friend and real estate agent Natasha Huizinga. I popped by an open house she was hosting to check out a brand new build in Brighton, Ontario. It had some lovely finishes that I wanted to see. At that time I was on the fence about selling my Alma Street house. Several hours later I decided she would be my new agent and well, our friendship blossomed.

Just a short while ago Natasha made a big change in her career and moved her office to a new location. By doing this she now has an incredibly nice size space with a window all to herself. The space however… not that nice looking. Like many established older buildings the colour schemes are a little less appealing to todays standards. While we were chatting about her big move she mentioned that she would be allowed to paint and freshen up the space. I asked what colour she was going to do and she said “well, we actually get a colour palette from the building and we can choose one of them”. She mentioned that the space was dark an uninviting and wished she could make it light, bright and airy.

Seeing an opportunity I offered to give her a hand in creating a space that is all of those things. Since I also have all the time in the world right now (not working), this would be the highlight of my year. Interior design is something I’m truly passionate about. She agreed and so the design process began.

Here are the before pictures of her new office:

The space is 8 feet by 14.5 feet. It has one 26″ wide floor to ceiling length window, main entrance door and an emergency exit door. It also has a newly installed brown, tan, grey and black speckled carpet. And currently the walls are brown.

Natasha knew she wanted a new chair, a white desk, lighter paint colour and window covering. Since I had some decor in my garage from my Alma St house I asked if she would like to see the items and decide if they may work, she said “of course”. So I brought her a floral painting with grey, taupes and greens in it, two lamps with champagne glass and a roll of leftover wall paper from my powder room Reno. All of these items have one thing in common – they are all neutral.

Here are the items:

I think she was most excited about the wall paper. I showed her how nice it looked installed in the powder room and asked if she thinks she’d be allowed to hang it. And since we knew that the paint would need to be a neutral we went through the Benjamin Moore fan deck and landed on Balboa Mist as the first option to paint the office. Natasha sent the paint colour and picture of the wall paper to the higher powers and they were both approved. We were so excited! Our second option was Accessible Beige – another beautiful neutral wall colour.

We had our paint colour and wall paper approved and now it was time to create the space. Shelving, guest chairs, a place for shoes and coats, and most importantly a snack/drink station.

Here is our mood board:

We discussed having a budget. We are both very frugal gals so we added up the items and costs that we felt each items would be roughly and came in around $1300. This includes all furnishings, accessories, paint and supplies. As we began to source the items we liked the best we found some great sales and realized that we would in fact come in around $1000. You gotta LOVE saving money!!!

This coming week we will be hitting the stores, picking up orders and finishing up the renovation. I hope you all stay tuned for what’s to come – it’s going to be amazing!

🙂