DIY: new office space

October 11, 2025

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As I shared a few weeks ago, this year has brought some surprises, most notably the fact that my husband and I lost our federal jobs and had to find work in the private sector. This has been a really tough thing for us because we truly loved our federal jobs and felt like we were making a difference for people in need. And all of the work we’d been doing for the past decade was erased, which was hard to stomach.

But, at the end of the day, we can’t control any of it. All we can do is look toward the future with hope. And I am so grateful that we’ve both landed on our feet. John has started working in an office in DC, and I’m planning to work from home.

Given all of this transition, I wanted to create a fun, creative space for my workdays. If I’m going to be working from home, which might get lonely, let’s make the space as beautiful and comforting as possible, right?

If you’ve been following here for a while, you might recognize this sitting room that’s connected to our bedroom.

I love the secretary — it was in my house growing up, so it holds a lot of memories — but it’s not the most practical for storage. The drawers were were so full of junk that it was hard to find anything in them, and the bottom drawer was completely broken. Plus, although the secretary opens to become a desk, it’s shorter than a normal desk, and working there was hurting my back. We ended up buying a new desk for the space.

To spice it up, I decided to wallpaper the wall behind the desk. I LOVE Rifle Paper, so I treated myself by ordering quite a few of their wallpaper samples. The finalists are shown below. Which one do you like best?

After considering the color of the rug and the overall feel I wanted, we chose the Willowberry wallpaper in sage and white. In the photo above, this is the wallpaper in the middle of the bottom row. I love it!!

The process of hanging the wallpaper went well until the very end. I was grooving and listening to true crime podcasts when I suddenly realized that I was about two feet short of wallpaper. Eek! But this is why I love pasted wallpaper so much more than peel-and-stick. After about an hour, I was able to connect scraps of wallpaper like puzzle pieces and cobbled together enough to cover the rest of the wall. Can you see it in the picture below? All of the wallpaper below where I’m pointing was scrap! Thank goodness for wallpaper paste.

As luck would have it, my mom and I found a gorgeous green office chair at Home Goods. And once the wallpaper was up, the chair matched perfectly!

To make the space truly mine, I added a poster from Shrine Mont, a retreat center in rural Virginia. We’ve been going there since the girls were born, and John and I got married at the outdoor shrine pictured on the poster seven years ago. Just seeing the drawing fills me with peace.

I started trying to use the desk but quickly realized I needed a space for all my stuff! I have reference books for work, a pile of blank greeting cards and stamps, and notebooks for jotting down ideas. To corral all. the. stuff, I bought a short bookshelf from Wayfair.

And, for the crowning touch, I employed one of my decorating tricks — I painted the bookshelf the same color as the background of the wallpaper. (Did you know that most paint stores can create custom colors? I brought in a small sample of the wallpaper, and they matched it on the spot.) This simple trick transformed the bookshelf from the bright, shiny, factory white color to a more muted color that blends into the wallpaper and looks like an intentional part of the space.

I’m so very happy with the way this turned out! This sweet space gives me the calm, happy vibes I wanted — and it makes me look forward to logging in each day.