Remodelaholic

I’m Lauren from Bless’er House, and if you’ve never ventured over to my little corner of the blogosphere, I’ll give you the quick skinny- I’m sort of an industrial farmhouse junkie. My handy hubby and I have been known to take on some really outside-of-the-box projects like building an inexpensive wood beam doorway or installing an oversized faux fireplace. This time around, we set our sights on our home office that had barely been touched since move-in day over two years ago: From the very beginning, I had the idea to decorate this space to have a vintage industrial military feel.

My husband was in the Marine Corps years back, and I wanted this to be a place he could display his memorabilia and call it his own. I wanted to install some wood and steel industrial shelving similar to ones I’d seen at Restoration Hardware, except without the $3,000 price tag.

My kind of DIY- easy and cheap, and really, I guess these would barely be considered DIY. We ended up buying three of them, and we were still able to use half of one in our garage for actual workshop storage. I set out to work with a mound of thrift store finds, hand-me-downs, and mementos from my husband’s military days and came up with this: Between the two tall shelves, I made a DIY vintage style pull down map using a poster and wooden dowel rods.

I tried utilizing multiple elements- aged metal, paper, greenery, woven baskets, and rough wood. This vintage suitcase once belonged to my grandmother, but in addition to its sentimental meaning, it serves as storage for photos that we can easily access whenever we’d like.

The cigar box on top, even though it’s a memento from our wedding, serves as storage for business cards. When decorating shelves, mantels, tabletops, wherever you’d like, keep the number 3 in mind when grouping objects. On the shelf below, the potted plant, concrete finial statue, and the set of books together serve as a grouping of three. Add interest by placing some books in a row and stacking others on top of each other to break up straight lines.

It’s totally up to your style and how much blank space you want, but when in doubt, simplicity is always a good idea. You don’t have to fill up every nook and cranny of a shelf to make it feel complete.

I’m typically a neutral, earth tones kind of gal, but if you love bright, vivid colors, use them! Since this is a military inspired office, I tried to space out items with olive drab colors to make the display more cohesive. You can stop in to see all of my other DIYs and budget decorating tricks on my blog, Bless’er House.