Low on space for a home office? A home office does not have to take up a lot of space. Below we will show you how to turn your closet into a home office.
Originally, this post was published on my first blog, The Mustard Ceiling in 2011. It was written by my ex-husband Alfred (Hi Alfred 🙌) while we were renovating our first home.
Now, everyone is working from home. It is more important than ever to carve out a piece of home for your office. This tutorial is a simple, inexpensive way to create a functional workspace that doesn’t take up a lot of room.
There are many ways to create a comfortable workspace at home. Get creative.
On that note, take it away Alfred.
HOW TO TURN YOUR CLOSET INTO AN OFFICE
It’s Alfred, Elizabeth’s husband, again for another to-do post. The Cloffice was one of our more unique home improvement projects, and the most fun. Why? because it was new, it was trendy and it was finally going to be a space for me in our home. Guys, if you live with or marry an Interior Designer, you don’t get a whole lot of the house to call just yours.
When we moved into our house, we quickly realized that we had to solve the problem of where to do the un-fun stuff like pay bills, do homework and maintain our family records. Our house only has 2 bedrooms and setting up a guest room in our office, or an office in our guest room was “unacceptable.” Solution: Turn one of the many closets in the house in to a mini office.
The process was pretty easy and took us bout 3 days, about 2-3 hours a day. Like any project read all the steps a few times, before starting the project.
1 | REMOVE CLOSET DOORS
You can replace them later, if you would like to maintain the illusion of an closet, or hang a curtain up like we did.
2 | Remove all shelves, poles, and junk from the closet
3 | Patch all holes to make sure it is ready for painting
4 | PAINT
*Note from Elizabeth. We used a warm, light gray from Valspar, called Frappe. I recommend keeping your wall color light and bright. Closets are typically pretty small. Light walls will make your “cloffice” more functional for work.
5 | Build Shelves
These can be made out of furniture grade wood and painted any color you want. Make a plan for your shelves, #, height, and if you want cubby holes or not. Draw your shelves to scale on a piece of paper to make sure it looks about right. You can use the golden ratio I discussed in my previous post to make the dimensions pleasing to the eye. The Construction is easy. Use 1/2 x1 pieces that go the depth of the shelves to hold the shelves on the wall.
6 | Frame the Shelves
The goal is to make it look like a built in piece of furniture, so once the shelves are up you need to “frame” the shelves to look like a bookcase. A piece of 1/2″ x 1″ wood down the height of the shelves hides the wood you used to hold the shelves up. A piece of crown molding also works well at the top to give it a finished look. Finishing nails works best for attaching the wood.
7 | prep and paint
Putty up the holes for any screws/ nails, and joint and sand ’em till they disappear. Then prime, and paint. We used oil-based, semi-gloss Benjamin Moore, Swiss Coffee.
8 | Prep the Desk surface
We used a piece of chopblock wood countertop from IKEA, but you can use anything. Stain the wood to your desired color. It may take a few coats, and don’t let the stain dry, this will make the stain uneven. When deciding on the dimensions, you want to leave 1/16″ space on either side of the desk for crumbs, dirt and other junk to fall through when you clean it. Plus, leave a 1″ gap at the back so that you can pass electrical wires up through the back of the desk.
9 | Install the Desk
Use more 1/2″ x1″ pieces of wood to brace the desk up and attach the desk with small 1″ L brackets. Don’t forget to leave the gap in the back. Screws work best but make sure they will not go through the depth of your desk, and you don’t attach at a seam in the chop block.
10 | Electrical (Hardest part)
If you already have an electrical socket in the closet then your job is easy. If not you can install an electrical outlet, yourself or hire a professional to to it (Recommended). Also if you have a light in the top of the closet you can replace the simple light bulb with a more fancy ceiling light. Make sure when planning your shelves that you leave enough room to install the light.
11 | Creativity
Let your creativity go and fill your cloffice with what you think you need, books, magazines, bills, small stone lions. Here is where you design the details. If you want to be able to cover up the cloffice you can reattach the doors or put up a curtain.
Those are the basics. You should now have a unique selling feature in your home and a space other than a kitchen table, guest room, garage or box of papers, dedicated to organizing your life. Good luck.
Alfred