A funny thing about summer, especially if you have kids is that we use some real magical thinking to plan projects as if we’ll have MORE time (it’s so much less!). We know the truth, yet hold so much hope and excitement for how productive we’ll be. We had a lot of awesome family stuff planned (multiple family reunions, team trip, LA friends, CA road trip) and this is our first normal week where I can see clearly how much work I am behind on. We now have deadlines for this guest cottage, which honestly had to happen for us to be able to prioritize it. EHD is slammed this summer, in really good creative large ways and this guest house sat without a deadline and therefore I mostly worked on it on the weekends and at night. But this room is getting its debut soon because we have a big sponsored shoot in August which feels both doable and laughable (setting it up for a fall entertaining shoot). But more importantly I have an existential deadline: I’m desperate to work out here both with my team and on my own this summer.

We are basically hosting a month long summer camp for our kids and their closest friends in our backyard with a teenager making sure everyone stays alive and has sunscreen. It makes me so happy to see it being enjoyed by so many and I genuinely love hearing them all laughing and running and playing. But the level of summer chaos and distraction just went from the usual 6 to a solid 1056 so mama needs somewhere quiet to work (yes, I’ve been working in the garage which is actually totally great but packed with design stuff so not great for the whole team to be in there).

But before we can work out in the guest cottage, we have to install our beautiful Quilt mini-splits for AC now and heat in the winter. And before that can happen we need to finish all the walls so that Greensavers (our install team) can put up all the mini-splits at the same time. So the sponsored shoot deadline will help us finish the room “good enough” for photography but the EHD team needs an office and I need my sanity back (if thats even possible, what with my peri-menopausal state ruling my emotions and making normal things feel overwhelming – HRT has been started! Help is on the way!). But estrogen patches aside, do you want to see where we are headed in the design of this room? Or would you rather hear about my overwhelm? Room it is!

The Upstairs Office

This room needed the least amount of work – or more bluntly put we aren’t putting that much work into it because it’s good enough for us. It’s just a big square covered in original bead board with a cute slanted ceiling, interior window (that has a crack but we’ll deal with that later) and a nice exterior window that probably needs to be fixed as it won’t stay closed without help, but that’s another days problem.

Brian and I scraped the lead paint and encapsulated it with some special primer (we are’t 100% done). We hired someone to update the electrical and will put in a Quilt mini-split on the window wall (covered in painted bead board so you don’t notice it – genius). So to make it functional we really just need to install the lighting, plugs and paint. EASY PEESY.

The bottom half was wood bead board that someone had tried to scrape the paint off, unsuccessfully. There are a million imperfections in the wood – cracks, holes, etc and some of them we are fixing but we are embracing the jank for the most part. Nothing that a good coat of paint can’t hide!

Since we work hybrid, the only times we really work together here are to shoot and to meet. On big design days we need a big table with multiple computers and we want to keep the more relevant materials for design projects near us but the whole ‘library’ will remain in the prop garage for now. Every room in this house needs to be flexible for shoot space so we aren’t doing huge built-ins or anything, just a big old table and some credenzas for closed storage.

The Paint

So we started with the fun stuff – the paint colors. I really thought that this would be my ‘Dead Salmon‘ moment (a famously good pink from Farrow and Ball) but ironically it looked too fleshy and muddy up here. I had ordered a ton of Samplize samples to see not only what we loved in person but what would be prettiest with the natural light on camera.

SW Artistic Taupe | SW Mulberry Silk | BM Desert Rose | SW Sashay Sand | SW Trusty Tan | SW Doeskin | SW Canyon Clay | SW Hushed Auburn

These were our main contenders and admittedly it was hard to choose. So why narrow it down to just one?

With all of the trim and texture up here, I always knew that this was an opportunity to do multiple colors. But since this is where Gretch and Marlee will spend a lot of time, I really wanted their say as well. And thankfully we all wanted pinks and reds, and liked an assortment at that.

We want to do the trim along the chair rail height a different color (as well as the baseboard). So the bottom half will be a medium pink, the trim will be a darker brick red and the top will be a lighter pink that will flood the ceiling. We all loved how the setup above looked. And don’t let the blue undertones of the primer fool you. These are warm colors but they are still pretty light.

I’m modeling the three colors that we are going to use. The top is SW Sashay Sand, the darker red on the trim and baseboards is SW Canyon Clay and the bottom bead board is SW Hushed Auburn. Of course the real question is the flooring. Will we have time to paint our big pattern on the floor before the shoot? We aren’t sure. So regardless we’ll paint it one of the colors (it’s eventually going to be a multi-color diamond pattern with some folk art fun) and then later when we are fully done with it and ready to reveal it as our office (after the fall entertaining shoot) then we’ll have the floor done.

The Preview

Want a sneak peek of a few pieces we’re leaning toward?

We are aiming for darker woods, not walnut but even warmer/redder to complement the paint tones. We were all really drawn to these curved back chairs and this 94″ table should give us plenty of space to spread out. And then maybe a light vintage rug? As you know, we love using Spoak to build the space out before ordering. And envisioning the paint job (though not exactly accurate) is pretty fun to see. We’re still trying to nail down the head chairs and the overhead lighting (still loving the one from Olde Brick Lighting that we mocked up in this post) but like that we can try a bunch until we get it right.

I thought we had til mid-September to shoot but whoops, I was off by a month. So it’s go time. But of all our projects, this is the one that I’m least worried about. It feels fun and doable since there is barely any construction left (upstairs at least). Wish us luck! xx

*Photos by Kaitlin Green