In our previous blog we left you toward the end of 2022 after the ceiling of our new office fell in. We won't get into the ins and outs of what happened during this period because it's pretty self explanatory and wasn't really part of the main progress of getting this space to where we wanted it - it was just an annoying job that had to be done! Our makeover series on the blog and instagram has glazed over a lot of issues we faced but this isn't the place for negative energy and things are looking up now!

A fresh start

So, let's fast forward to January 2023. A new year and a fresh start to our project. It was time to get these walls pulled down and a new layout created, and we kicked off the year feeling positive!

The kitchen and bathroom were already a mess from the leak and the ceiling coming down, but we weren't too bothered because these rooms were being pulled out and reconfigured anyway. After much back and forth and discussions with our builders, we decided to go ahead with our idea of a mezzanine level with our bathroom, kitchen, and stock room in a row underneath.

Once the bare bones of the new layout went in, that was when the vision really started to come alive!  

And the first time we saw the mezzanine... we couldn't BELIEVE just how much floor space we had created! This is going to be our desk and computer space so we got pretty excited thinking about how we can utilise it, cover it head to toe in plants and cute lights and make it extra cosy ready for winter.

We decided on colour palettes for the kitchen and bathroom, had the kitchen designed and made and delivered, and in a matter of weeks it had gone from the huge empty space with a hole in the ceiling, to something we could now imagine ourselves working in. 

You can see here just how quickly the project was coming along by April / May 2023 and lots of jobs were begun in quick succession. One day we'd go in and see the bones of a few kitchen cabinets installed, and the next we suddenly had appliances and a worktop!

Hello appliances and kitchen worktops and subway tiles and BEAUTIFUL herringbone floor. We almost went with black grout with the white subway tiles in the bathroom but we decided last minute to do white instead. It was the right decision because how clean and polished do those tiles look?

And to be honest, one of our biggest tasks around this time? Finding the perfect shade of green for the bathroom. THIS WAS NO EASY TASK. We were imagining our perfect Artemis green - not too many yellow undertones, not too much blue. It had to be right. After hunting through all the local DIY shops and online we ended up having to do a colourmatch, but you'll have to stick around and wait for the reveal on that one because the paint colour deserves a moment of its own.

So, now you're all caught up on our progress for the first half of 2023. At the time of writing (August 2023), we still aren't quite finished but the end is in sight.

When we first saw this office and put an offer in, we had imagined a timeline that would see us move into the space around Spring 2023. How naive were we! :') It would be easy to be disheartened by this, by things going wrong almost straight away and all the money and time that needed to be spent. 

But we forced ourselves to see the positive side - the delays have given us extra time in our old office to properly clear things out so we aren't filling our fresh new space with things that don't serve us or make us happy. Putting the time and energy in now to get the office exactly right for us will reward us further down the line. And if there is one rule we live by it's this - it is better to do the work in the summer while the sun is shining, than the dead of winter when all you want to do is hibernate. Future winter us - this is all for you!