by Rose McClement

I am sure by now you are quite familiar with the following workspace as we have shared and chatted about it many times before.

After images of this interior project appeared in the January issue of Tuis / Home Magazine last year, we have received so many compliments on this specific space.

This quirky workspace seems to stir up a stack of enthusiastic comments and questions. We heard a lot of: “Wow, this is awesome!”; “I want a workspace like that!”; “Where did you get that desk?”; “And the boxes where did you buy those?”; “Is that a real brick wall?!”

So we thought we would share a bit of the design process involved with this workspace with you.

Let me just add in here before I ramble on, that interior projects like this one and the related design processes always stay with us as memorable, creative thrills.

The overall style of the house was an eclectic mix of chic industrial with strong flavours of vintage and many a quirky touch to it.

When decorating a space, we generally tend to address the shell first – the walls that is. In keeping with the industrial / vintage elements, we treated the wall behind the desk with that worn, exposed brick custom-printed wallpaper.  The wallpaper immediately added a ton of character, warmth and depth to the space.

For the desk, we sourced a vintage yellowwood interior door. The door had mouldings that were ideal for the distressed painted look and feel. I spent some time discussing the colours and the proposed paint technique with our supplier. After the initial stage of painting and distressing, we found the technique effect on the door to be a bit busy. Following a bit of trial and error, our supplier toned down the techniqueing and managed to deliver exactly what I had in mind… and it was stunning.

As you can imagine, a door with mouldings is hardly the ideal work or writing surface. To get around this, the client had a solid piece of glass popped onto the top of the door – now ideal desktop. That reminded me that back in the 50s and 60s every dining table and dressing table had glass tops – to protect the wooden surface.

To complete the desk we had natural wooden trestles made to serve as rustic table legs. We paired our now-finished desk with Eames replica chairs and an over-sized Anglepoise floor lamp adjacent to the desk (it looked SO cool).

There are two other features that made this space so unique. Firstly, the wall-mounted boxes, designed by Marica and custom-made by the same supplier who made the desk. For depth and fun, these boxes are different shapes and sizes. Each box had the inside back painted in colours relevant to the overall scheme. The second unique feature is those quirky over-sized wooden glasses which are actually mirrored.

You’ll also notice all the interesting decor accessories – we sourced those with the client in various retail outlets in Cape Town. Furthermore, since the client pictured this workspace being dedicated to doing her artwork, she went on to include those art tools and elements in as well.

And there you have it! That is how we created this quirky little workspace. What do you think – do you love it as much as we do?

P.S. If you want to see more photos of this particular project, be sure to check out our portfolio page: here.