His & Hers Home Office + Guest Bedroom Reveal

It’s been over two months since I shared the plans for our his & hers home office & guest bedroom, and I’m excited that it’s finally done! Well, just about – I still have to decide how I’m going to hide all the wires on Jonathan’s desk, but otherwise, it’s done! There were a few hiccups in the process but overall, I’m really happy with how it’s turned out. We spend most of our time (when we’re not sleeping) in this room, so I’m glad it’s finally done!

Here’s a quick recap of what the room looked like before. Our desks were on different walls, and the sleeper couch that we needed to move in here was in what is now the nursery.

I played with a couple of configurations in my head before deciding to go with tandem desks, and I love how it turned out. Here’s what it looks like now!

If I were designing this room from scratch, I would have opted for a smaller sleeper sofa, as this queen sized one is quite bulky in this room. But ya gotta work with what you have! Since we don’t have any guests anyway (and only God knows when we will have guests again), I tried to convince Jonathan that we should just move the couch to our bedroom, but he vetoed my appeal since he didn’t want to have to move it again lol. It is nice to have a seating area for when I want to just be on my phone (I do most of my Instagramming on the couch) but don’t want to leave the office.

P.S. If you haven’t seen how I put together this gallery wall, check it out here!

I’m happy that we went with this configuration because it allows a lot of free space, which TKB now commands when he’s awake. Since we both work in the same room, it’s easy to take turns passing the kid a toy, burping him, or making funny faces to keep him entertained without too much disruption to our work.

One of the biggest impact purchases in this room are these stackable storage cubes! They help organize the nook area, which was a disaster before. The bigger cubes hold tools and sporting equipment, while the smaller ones hold my DIY arts & crafts, Jonathan’s extra cables (yup, there’s more!), and products that I need to shoot. There’s space behind them for my ring light and tripod, and some extra throw pillows.

One purchase that didn’t work out as I imagined was this corner shelf. Initially I bought it to place below Jonathan’s desk and help hide cords & serve as clutter free shelving, but it was slightly too wide (triple measure your pieces guys!), and he didn’t like the reduced leg room. Luckily it can be used either horizontally or vertically, so it fit nicely into the corner between his desk and the couch.

Now onto the wire management. There are (no exaggeration) 11 things in our office that need to be plugged into power, plus a handful of USB plugs. This power strip does double duty by helping keep our desks joined together but also providing a few power plugs as well as USB plugs. I mounted two power strips to the underside of Jonathan’s desk using command strips, which helped with the wire clutter. One of them fell so I need to reattach it, but I’m also considering using an undershelf basket from my kitchen organization last year (that doesn’t have any use in our current kitchen) and placing the power strips and cords in there. I’ll do an update once I decide!

Other than that the only other thing this room is missing is our degrees! I was initially looking at a frame with three openings, but of course my degrees are all different sizes, so I may have to do a DIY mini gallery wall thing right above my desk. Definitely not a priority right now, but something I’m considering.

Sources:

• Desks (table & legs) – Ikea
• Gold & white chair – similar at Wayfair
• Black & brown chair – Wayfair
• Filing cabinet – Lynk (Kenyan company) (similar at Ikea)
• Sleeper sofa – Ikea (on sale until 7/19/20)
• Blue pillows – Decor Gallery (Kenyan company)
• Gallery wall – DIY! except for bottom left artwork, which is by LouLou Art Studio
• Storage shelf – Ikea
• Blue & white basket – Erika’s Antique (Kenyan company)
• Rug – Wayfair (on sale)
• Storage cubes – Ikea
• Nyatiti stand – Amazon
• Ceiling pendant – Ikea (bought secondhand)

This is the second room that I’m comfortable saying is done in our apartment (the living room is the first). Next up, finishing the nursery!