DIY home office reveal and budget breakdown

This post will break down our entire DIY home office renovation and show where we started and how it turned out. We’ll also break down the full budget!

We’re finally done with our complete DIY home office renovation where we turned the formal dining room in our home into a functional and beautiful home office for our business.

When we moved into our house, we dumped all of our office and craft supplies into this room, put some hairpin legs on a couple pieces of plywood and have been working out of that space for 2 1/2 years.

Our goal with this project was to give ourselves a functional space to work in, but also make the room a focal statement as it’s the first thing you see when you walk in our door.

With guests coming in frequently, we were embarrassed to have them see how bland and undecorated this space was. Now we’re excited to show it off.

Let’s dive into the full final reveal of our home office and then break down the budget for you in case you are interested in creating something like this for your home!

DIY home office reveal - Charleston Crafted

Make sure you check out our entire DIY home office renovation series!

DIY home office renovation

Our DIY home office renovation turned out fantastic. We love how much of a statement the built-in unit is and the whole room makes so much more sense now.

We did a huge project to completely gut the formal dining room and turn it into a traditional office space.

The first step in the renovation was actually to close up a doorway to the kitchen with drywall to give ourselves a full blank slate to work with. This doorway led to the kitchen and we needed to have a full blank wall to install our design.

One of the biggest parts of turning a dining room into an office is to remove some of the formal dining room aspects, such as taking out chair railing and wainscoting molding and to swap out the traditional chandelier for a more modern light fixture.

This helped the space feel less like a dining room! After making the space ready, we started to build the office.

DIY home office built-ins

First step in our home office renovation was to install some built in storage. We decided to use unfinished cabinets from Home Depot to create the configuration that would work best for our needs.

We have tons of storage now, including cabinets and drawers that suit all the different things we need, from paper and printers, to craft supplies to sewing machines.

These cabinets come unfinished so you can paint or stain. We painted ours Behr’s “NYPD” to match our mudroom lockers and shiplap fireplace.

We also added gold hardware that we had used in other spots in our home.

Gold hardware on built-in office cabinets

DIY butcher block desk

Another key element of our home office is our butcher block desk. We added butcher block counters between the upper and lower cabinets in the built-in, but extended the butcher block out to make our desk.

Some people online thought this was controversial to have the upper cabinets sitting directly on the counter, but we don’t actually use that counter space to work, we use the desktop that sticks out.

We did a simple waterfall piece down from the counters to the desk because the height of a standard counter is too high for a desk. Now we can sit opposite each other and talk easier when working together.

These are the chairs we picked for the desk and they are so comfy!

Wide view of DIY home office with butcher block desk

DIY butcher block floating shelf

Continuing with our butcher block theme, we added a DIY floating shelving unit made of butcher block between the upper cabinets.

We had initially planned to make simple floating shelves like these but decided the space was way too long and added an extra cabinet on both sides and filled in the space with the butcher block unit.

This thing is massive and super heavy, but it is a great accent piece to tie in to the butcher block tone on the desk and break up the wall of cabinets.

Home office storage solutions

We also needed a lot of storage solutions for inside our cabinets. One thing our old “office space” was lacking was good storage.

We used a lot of acrylic bins and dividers for in drawer storage and even within the cabinets to make sure everything had its own little spot.

Some things that didn’t have good storage solutions ready to buy, we had to make, like our DIY paper organizer that we built from plywood to custom fit inside one of the cabinets.

Home office device storage

One of the huge things about making a beautiful office space is that we didn’t want to clutter it up with tons of electronics and office items on the desk. That would really ruin the beauty and flow.

So, we tucked our printer into one of the cabinets and cut a hole in the side of the cabinet to access the outlet on that wall.

We also installed a Docking Drawer in one of the drawers to charge our laptops and devices. We keep them stored in there and the Docking Drawer charges everything out of sight.

Home office decor

We finished with some simple decor on the floating shelf that we had laying around the house.

Most of this decor is things we have moved from room to room as we have renovated different spaces and switched things up.

We also opted to fill one of the opposing corners with a “cozy corner” by adding a really comfortable casual chair, a small table we made with hairpin legs and a piece of scrap butcher block cut off, and a painting we got from an antique store.

This cozy corner is a great place for us to sit if we want to work but don’t want to sit at the desk. It’s also a place for visitors to sit if we are meeting with someone.

DIY home office renovation budget breakdown

This DIY home office renovation was not a cheap project. However, it is critical to our daily life and a reflection of who we are.

We were able to do all the work ourselves with no issues, so we just had to pay for material costs.

This is what it cost us specifically for this project and doesn’t include anything we already had on hand, such as screws or tools, or things we were reusing, such as molding or table legs.

DIY home office cost:

Cabinets (full cost of each cabinet in that post)- $1,274
4 pieces of butcher block- $748
Cabinet/drawer hardware- $54
Floating shelf bracket- $24
1 gallon of paint- $43
Crown molding- $50
2 office chairs- $185
Cozy chair- $300
Light fixture- $209
Docking Drawer- $217
Organization bins- $238
Total Built-In Cost- $2,193
Total Accessories and Organization Cost- $1,149
GRAND TOTAL- $3,342

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Sean

Hey there, I’m Sean, the woodworking enthusiast and builder behind CharlestonCrafted.com! Since 2012, I’ve been sharing the magic of turning raw materials into beautiful creations. I love teaching others the art and satisfaction of woodworking and DIY. I try to inspire fellow crafters to make something extraordinary out of nothing at all.