Making Your Space Your Own: Unless You're Selling

When you own your own home, you can do whatever you like to it. Lime green walls, purple walls, crazy window coverings, messed up carpet. But when you're selling, that all changes. This post is about a highly personalized room in my house, which is lovely, but if I were to sell it, it would have to go back to..well.. plain.  Buyers find personalization too distracting when they view your house. Anyway, on to my favorite room in my own house:

Before

My studio has been many things since we moved into this house in 2001. It started as a home office, with a big cherry desk and cherry finish book shelves. Very traditional (read: BORING). Then I started doing more art and needed the space. Before I could make it into an art studio, I needed shelves, which my husband very handily built for me:

You can kind of see the boring light sage green it was painted before when it was just a home office. Say goodbye to drab!

During

When I was creating art full time and teaching kid's art in the studio, messes didn't matter. I completely ruined the carpeting that was in there, but at the time it was ok. My daughter Alex is also very artistic and as long as she was in the studio, she could make art freely without worrying about making a mess. To an outsider, it may have looked like a mess already!

And I found these benches in a neighbor's trash, which I immediately reupholstered:

As a result of growing up with a free space to create, Alex is now a very talented and insightful artist.

Then the studio took on sort of a gypsy feel, with colored scarves in the windows and tiny white lights sparkling across the ceiling. I loved making art in here, or just to curl up with a good book. (See the new upholstery on the free benches? I got it on clearance at Hobby Lobby for $1/yard!)

  Here's what it looked like at night:

So after I started back to school in 2011, I could no longer dedicate myself to art full time. I did, however, need a space to chill, do yoga, read, and do homework. So we redid the room again:

A desk for writing and school work:

Notice: no more carpet! Dark stained bamboo flooring that we did ourselves!
For my birthday I got a big screen Smart TV. One of the free apps is Yoga!

The hubby even installed a surround sound system for my yoga and meditation music. It's not bad for Netflix, either lol!
Sound system: Why do cats always migrate to your electronics?

And my sitting/reading/meditation space:

As I said, this is my favorite room in this house. I want to do bamboo floors in more of the rooms, too. I detest carpeting!

So this room has really gone through a lot of changes in the 13 years we've lived here.

But your space is YOURS and should change and grow with you. Once you buy your own home, you can do whatever you like. Now, if you're selling, of course my advice is to go as neutral as possible!  Potential buyers want to imagine themselves in your house, and they can't do that if you have a lot of personalization going on. But we're not selling any time soon and I think I should enjoy this space while I'm here. Don't you agree?


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