efore we bought our house, we lived in a condo. It was a 2-bedroom, 2-bath condo, a lovely start to our life together. But, the longer we lived there and the more my business grew, we quickly outgrew the place. The 2nd bedroom had a guest bed, an overstuffed chair (that couldn’t fit in the living room), Kevin’s desk, and my desk. On top of all of that stuff, I also needed a place to store my camera bags and suitcase. By the end, we had to prop the mattress against the wall just to make more space.

As you can imagine, this was not an environment that lent itself to creativity.

So when we were house-hunting, one of the things I knew I needed was an office space. Being a photographer demands a lot of computer time. Aside from being on the computer, I knew I needed a space that would be inspirational. I needed a space that would be happy and beautiful. Because I needed to be able to look away from my screen and surround myself in the creative, the right-brained, the colorful.

When we walked through our home at the first showing, I noticed a nook in the basement with a large window and a perfectly sized corner for a desk. I still was unsure if I would use a full bedroom upstairs for my office or the basement nook, but in the end, I knew we would eventually want to use all of the bedrooms and I didn’t relish the idea of spending my computer time alone upstairs in my office when I could be in the basement which is more open.

I painted the accent wall a beautiful pink to coordinate with my branding. I just adore it!

One of our very first projects in this house before we moved in was to put up the shelving against the pink wall. Had we waited a month or two, we would’ve had a lot more experience under our belts as far as drilling into studs and putting up shelves. As it stands, it was our first project and I do love how it turned out, even though we knew nothing at the time about mounting wall shelves aside from drilling into a stud.

Obviously, because of the large window, I needed something to control the light when I’m actually editing photos so I purchased blackout shades for the basement. I like to keep them open most of the time, but I do close them when I need to.

I totally lucked out with this lamp shade. It’s white when it’s off and when the lamp is on, it’s a perfect coral-pink color plaid!

I feel like every day I think of something new to add to this corner or something that could be done better, but I genuinely love my workspace.