Garage Into Home Studio and Office Reveal

It’s been months in the making and words can’t describe how excited I am to finally share with you my new home studio! With the arrival of #babygirlhearts less than 2 months away, we needed to move all my stuff out of the second bedroom in our bungalow and into the garage.

As with nearly all home projects, this one took way longer than expected. I thought this would have been done in February but it’s May and we just finished the last detail just a couple days ago. We hit some major bumps in the road (more on that below) that held up things but all in all, I’m really happy with the outcome. So if you’re a fan of big before and afters and tons of organization, keep on reading and sorry in advance but this is a long post!

Before I jump into all the details about the space, let’s remember the mess that it was before. Looking back at that before photos makes me forget just how bad it was. I can hardly believe it’s the same garage!

As I mentioned in my garage progress post a while back, we rent our home and while I wanted to make this space functional, I wanted to do it on the cheap. At at the end of the day, all the money spent customizing this home will be lost when we eventually move out. You can go back and read that post to see the process of how we had drywall and insulation put up and the ceiling painted (after getting tons of quotes and ultimately hiring guys off Craigslist, which let’s be real, is risky but worked out great).

After hiring guys to do the drywall and paint the ceiling, we DIYed the rest to save money. We removed my Elfa shelving from my old office and reconfigured it for the new space. After having it set up for a couple years, I learned what worked well and what type of storage I needed more of so I added a few extra shelves and swapped the layouts from one wall to another.

And yes, I indeed did paint the concrete floors yellow. And let’s just say a post titled, “How Not to Paint Concrete Floors” will be on the blog soon. I learned a ton while doing it and will be sharing my experience with you soon.

One of the finishing touches to the space was making new labels for all my storage containers using some adhesive vinyl and my Silhouette Cameo. And of course, being a graphic designer at heart, I had to use the same font I use for all my branding to label the containers. I also created icons for the larger white storage totes and I just love how they came out. If you’re interested in making your own labels for your supplies with your cutting machine, I’m selling my creative tool kit icons on my Creative Market shop.

I painted the inside of the garage door my favorite pastel coral, Behr Pink Mimosa, the same color I used for a lot of my photo and video backdrops. I added a tassel kitchen rug to use as a doormat and placed a large turquoise outdoor rug under my office chair. Just inside the door is the computer side of the space. Here I keep my iMac, hard drives, cameras, printers, Silhouette, and office supplies. My favorite new gadget I added is an Echo Plus, which has a smart device hub built-in, which is just tech talk for I can now wirelessly turn on and off the lights in the space because I installed Hue lightbulbs in each of the bright yellow pendant cord lamps.

Part of the space still has to function as a garage and store large items such as our bikes. Since we use them regularly we opted to just place them right inside the large pull up door rather than hang them on the wall. I bought a clear chair mat to place underneath them and protect the painted floor.

Hanging just above the bikes is a white wall organizer I picked up for $15 at Home Goods. It was the perfect solution to hiding and storing the modem which is wired into the wall since we couldn’t easily relocate it.

I reused a lot of the basic storage containers I have had for years and just gave them a little refresh with new, matching labels. It’s crazy how such a small project can make such a huge impact—and make you instantly look like the world’s most organized person.

The majority of my DIY supplies are on the opposite wall which is now 4′ wider than before. When I reconfigured the shelving, I opted to add a vertical column on the left to house all my sewing supplies. Since I’m sewing a lot more lately, I wanted my machine to be easily accessible (it was previously on a high shelf). I picked up new mint striped storage totes that I’m using to hold my fabric stash.

This isn’t new but I still love how functional it is. I use a kitchen pan and lid organizer to keep my backdrops and poster boards tidy.

Does one need more than one pair of scissors? Yes, always yes. I added a third Elfa utility board to this new layout to hang my Silhouette cutting mats and rulers.

Since there are many things that need to stay in the garage, because you know, it’s still a garage we hung up 4 outdoor curtain panels to hide it all. And I have to say, I think this was the best storage solution of the space. We used a 10′ electrical conduct pipe (that we wrapped with white plastic closet rod covers) that we hung using above ground pool ladder flanges. After searching all over the hardware store and internet for an easy hanging solution, I stumbled upon these and they worked great.

All that goes to say I’m really excited about my new home studio and wish we did this makeover when we first moved into our home. Thanks for checking it out and please let me know if you have any questions about the space!

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