A Chic Office Redo for Abby Larson (Style Me Pretty Living)

This is a lesson in taking what you have and working it. No stranger to an ugly sofa (remember this beaut?), Abby set to work to make hand-me-downs and a bright white office space into an office so worthy of blogging. 99% of the goodies were either pieces she already had, were gifted to her or found at discount box stores. And by sprinkling in a few IKEA hacks, simple DIYs and lots of color - the look feels unique and thoughtfully crafted. Find the DIY projects here and here.

Sofas

We inherited the sofas from the previous owner of the home. Two identical-ish custom made slipcovered couches in a lemon yellow and kelly green stripe. Aside from the fact that the covers looked like they came with the couch and only a frame might be underneath, we never use this space so it really didn’t cross my mind to take a peak. When I did, I found this maybe awful, maybe awesome fabric that I’m pretty sure my parents had on a sofa when I was a kid.

So my three options were: use the striped slipcovers, embrace the vintage “chic” quality of the discovered fabric or buy new sofas all together. Something I definitely didn’t want to fork over the cash for. So we went with option two and had a blast imagining a room around 2 kind of ugly, kind of pretty sofas.

Pillows

Bringing the sofas to life through pillows was really the challenge. We hit up the fabric store with no aspirations or intentions. We simply wanted to the fabrics to speak to us and bridge the gap between pretty right now and pretty two decades ago when the sofas were purchased. We used an easy slipcover diy to create slipcovers for pillows we already had and then we filled in with a few pillows found at Homegoods. We stuck with only a couple of prints since the sofa was so loud, and aimed to make each sofa coordinate without matching entirely. Perhaps the statement pillows were the green mohair ones – we splurged on the fabric but the result pulled everything together and really made it feel cohesive.

Art

One of the easiest art projects we’ve ever done. We downloaded 3 different watercolor vector art files on vectorstock.com and used photoshop to resize them so that only a portion of each file showed on an 8.5 x 11 page. So with 3 pieces of art, we actually got 8 pieces of unique art. We popped them in frames we got at IKEA and hung them in two even rows. Total impact for such a bargain.

Desk Chair – Get the DIY here!

We were originally going to paint our Ikea chair in a rich green hue but didn’t love any of the spray paint colors – we were also going for ease b/c we didn’t want to have to deal with a lengthy paint session. So we opted for this gorgeous blue and updated it with a DIY leopard print round seat cushion. Because every room needs a splash of animal print.

Desk

The desk is one we’ve had from West Elm forever and we simply gussied it up with a lamp we had in storage, some of our SMP books and the little knick knacks we’re always using.

Rug

The neutral rug was pretty enough but I felt like the room needed a touch of something softer. That felt like luxury. We bought the moroccan 4×6 rug at West Elm and just layered so that it served more as an accessory than an all room statement.

Leather Chairs – Get the DIY here!

Perhaps the most amazing part of the transformation was these IKEA chairs that started off a bright neon green. Not cute. We used the original seat to create a template and stitched us up a new leather one with fabric that we found for about $15 a yard.

Coffee Table

Although it was dated, I felt like with the right accessories we could easily spice it up. I threw on stacks of my favorite books, a pretty tray, a great blue and white bowl that brought in the colors of the sofa without feeling matchy matchy and a vase of pretty flowers. Done and done.

Share this gorgeous gallery on