Desperate Office Makeover with Benjamin Moore Paint – Forget Me Not to the rescue! Part 1

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I’m bored with it.

I need something lighter… brighter.

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It’s time for a change.

It’s time to start painting, again.

I am a firm believer that paint enhances everything. It’s a way of making a change without having to buy new furniture, new shelving units or accessories.    I love colour on my walls – just white seems so blah to me. To say that I have spent a lot of time in a Benjamin Moore paint store would be an understatement. 

I have worked with the same colour specialist from Clancy’s Rainbow (my local Benjamin Moore store) for the last 15 years. Yes, fifteen years…  When we bought our first home in London,  she was instrumental in helping me choose the colours in my home with just a swatch of fabric and a few accessories to go by.  She helped me pick the colours for my bathroom counters (yes, I painted those), the foyer and the special treatment that we did to create a beach-y vibe for the awful paneling (trust me, it was genius).

Before

In my office the mitigating factor was a large desk from IKEA that has black legs and a orange tinted table top.  I wanted to blend in and not clash with my walnut bookshelves.  At the time, she picked a Benjamin Moore paint colour called Teak.  It looks pretty nice with the desk and all the black accents.

This wall is what I look at when I am sitting at my desk.  I love all of the pictures and inspirational quotes and the shelf directly in front of me.  What I don’t like is that the wall is very crowded.  I am seeking a bit more brightness and less chaos.  Yes, I said chaos on the walls.

This  bookshelf is visible from the entrance of the office.  The wall has a sign that says “simplify” and has my husband and my initials.  It also has my Downshifting Professional Organizing Solutions signs.  The unit is full of files and items that I have not looked at in years so, obviously, they have to go.  Some of the files will be kept in storage downstairs and some will be shredded.  The green boxes and magazine holders are from IKEA and I love them but alas, they will not fit into the new colour scheme.

I know you can’t read my mug but I received  this one at a conference years  ago when I re-branded to DownshiftingPRO. I have to admit,  I love drinking out of my ‘corporate’ mug in MY very own office.  It just seems so very grown up, don’t you think?

My obsession with colour has touched every room in this house.  I love Benjamin Moore paint so when I moved into my ‘dream’ home, I knew that I wanted colour to surround me.   I wanted to be able to stand in my foyer and see a seamless compliment of colour from my living room to my left, up the stairs, to the back of the kitchen and then my office to my right – a 180 degree colour palette as soon as you walk in the door!   The sight-lines encompass so much of the house, I wanted to ensure there was an seamless flow from room to room.

This is a rather large piece.  I am not certain that I will be keeping a piece of art that big on the wall.  I do love my hanging clipboards but I don’t find them easy to reach and seldom use them for that matter.  I am hoping to rectify that by changing them to a more convenient location.

The pictures and art pieces that we have on our walls  hold sentimental value to us because most are posters from museums that we have visited as a family.  So you may see a Picasso, Lichtenstein, Richter, Kandinsky, Renoir or Seurat in our home but they are all actual pieces of art that we saw in real life at the Guggenheim, the Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, MoMA,  The Vancouver Art Gallery, the Musée des Beaux Arts in Quebec City,  the Art Institute of Chicago or Detroit. 

I am a big fan of museums.  So whenever we have seen an exhibition that we particularly like or a museum that has impressed us, we usually get a poster and have it framed or mounted.  Consider it the poor man’s version of fine art .

I take my inspiration from many different things and this time it was the cover of an HGTV magazine that I bought last year.  I have had it in my office peeking out from here and there and then in a magazine rack that is directly across from my desk… just taunting me… just saying… to my office ‘I could be this pretty’ with a bit of Benjamin Moore paint.

It is not that I minded my teak coloured office.  I have loved it for 11 years.  Yes, its been eleven years since we painted this office.  So a few weeks back,  I had a massive burst of energy and decided to start cleaning out my office.  Once things started to leave and the space became more empty, I revisited  my dream of re-painting the office.

Benjamin Moore Paint Inspiration

With the firm commitment from my husband (otherwise known as the paint master), I quickly decided on a Benjamin Moore paint colour and had a colour sample made and I started emptying the office.  It only costs $8.99 but it is worth it to make sure that the colour is right.

The swatches does not do this colour justice.  It is a lovely foam green.  You will see in the other pictures how nicely it stands out.  We have not primed the wall at all so with a Benjamin Moore Fresh Start coat it would be easier to see the colour!

It is so very difficult to see that there are two very different colours on the wall.  The small one on the right was Ocean Air but the western sun just washes it out.  We ended up putting Ocean Air 2135-50 in the main floor bathroom. It looks pretty spectacular.

On my quest for a more standout colour, I wanted to go bold and gleaned inspiration from the Martha Stewart binder and I went with “Forget Me Not”… trust me… I won’t forget you! 

I’ll reveal more about the colour and the accessories in this follow up posts.  In the next one, I discuss how to save money by spraying the shelves instead of buy new ones. In the last of the three part series, I did a quick DIY projected that looks like I wallpapered the inside of the cabinets but wait and see what I actually used. I hope you will stick around to watch the transformation unfold.

Related Posts about My Benjamin Moore Home

• Sensational Room Makeover Ideas for 2021 with Benjamin Moore
• Desperate Office Makeover with Benjamin Moore Paint – Forget Me Not to the rescue! Part 1
• Office Makeover Spray Paint or Regular Paint Part 2
• Amazing Office Makeover try an Alternative to Wallpaper Part 3
• Stunning Room Makeover with Benjamin Moore – Paint selection
• How to make a small bathroom look big again with Paint – My Benjamin Moore Home

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