A $1,200 Home Office Makeover Has the Smartest IKEA Desk Hack
Part of growing as a family is adapting rooms in your home to best suit you and your loved ones’ needs. That’s what DIYer Hannah Ries (@therieshouse) did with her house’s small basement bedroom, which she transformed into a functional home office.
It was originally used for a nursery, but Hannah’s toddler outgrew it, and she decided it would be better used as a workspace. “We needed a space for an office and more usable storage,” she says. “The closet was non-functioning.”
Hannah and her husband, Justin, demoed out the closet and added built-in cabinets, floating shelves, and a desk, plus added a dramatic paint color during the One Room Challenge — all for just $1,200.
An IKEA RAST makes for a great desk base.
Rather than spending thousands of dollars on a lavish office desk, Hannah decided to create a custom built-in desk on the window side of the room, and she did so by adding custom woodworking to an IKEA find.
“RAST dressers are cheap at IKEA and make great desk bases,” she explains. The RAST comes in a three-drawer chest that costs just $49.99 to a six-drawer dresser that costs $99.99, and Hannah used two pine three-drawer RASTS, and she actually flipped them upside down and added new feet for her hack.
The DIYer added a shiplap wall treatment — without actual shiplap.
Once she had built her built-in desk, Hannah decided to add a DIY shiplap wall behind it. To do so, she used a sheet of underlayment (super-thin plywood) that she cut to size. As she notes, it’s “loads cheaper than actual shiplap”).
She painted the faux shiplap wall — and the rest of the office — a deep green (Behr’s Pinecone Hill).
Use scrap wood where you can.
Hannah and her husband used stock cabinets from Lowe’s for the built-in cabinets where the closet once was, but Hannah also stresses the importance of using scrap wood wherever you can to save money.
She used extra wood from the closet framing to create the floating shelves — and as a base for the built-ins. “So much storage!” Hannah says of the “after.”
Now that everything is said and done, Hannah couldn’t be happier with her home office transformation. “The impact of the space is amazing,” she says. “I feel so calm walking into the space, and as someone who has ADHD and owns businesses, having a separate space dedicated to work has been a game changer.”
For more smart, successful work setups, check out these 10 home office transformations.
This project was completed for the Spring 2024 One Room Challenge, in partnership with Apartment Therapy. See even more of the One Room Challenge before and afters here.
Inspired? Submit your own project here.