I’ve had my own home office for over 10 years, but I’ve never had to use it so often for virtual meetings. The pandemic changed that for all of us. 2 years later, I’m doing more virtual meetings than ever and needed to have a professional backdrop that reflected my personality.

So…

I painted a mural in my office!

I’d love to show you the before and after, so here we go!

How it started:

That Old Pink House has a beautiful built-in cabinet in the kitchen, and it was designed as a pass through cabinet into the dining room, which is currently my office. Many modifications have been made to the back of this cabinet through the years. At one time this room was my grandparents’ bedroom.

As you can see below, the front of the cabinet still looks great but the back doesn’t look so hot. It was time for some TLC!

Built in oak pantry cabinet from 1862 — Front and Back of the built in cabinet

Modified Pass Through Cabinet — Front and Back of the built in cabinet

Covering The Cabinet:

We had been planning to cover the cabinet for a while, so we already had the piece of wood to use. I had gone through various iterations of ideas… cork board? Chalk board? None of those had really inspired me, so I had been putting off this project for a while.

First we covered the back of the cabinet with wood and then we used our cordless DeWALT router to cut out the sides and give it a nice finish.

I completed the prep work by putting on several coats of Dutch Boy Forever Paint in a bright shade of white. It’s the same shade that I will use on the trim once I finally get to finish this room.

Ocean Inspired Office Mural:

Because my husband and I are into all things beach, of course I decided that the office mural was going to be a beach scene of some kind! I did some Pinterest research and found a lot of inspiring and easy to adapt designs.

I didn’t use any fancy methods to transfer a design to the surface… I simply took out a pencil and free handed it. I’m pretty comfortable with drawing and sketching, so this was not a problem for me. I know there are methods that use a projector to allow you to sketch the mural from an existing design, but I was looking for a free form and organic style.

One of my big inspirations was the work of a friend of mine, Julie Vornholt. She creates beautiful murals for her customers all over the US and shows off her process on instagram.

So Many Coats of Paint:

If I could do it over, I’d likely buy small cans of Dutch Boy interior paint mixed in the colors I needed. Instead I had purchased cheap acrylic paint from the craft store, which did not have good coverage. I ended up doing at least 4 coats of paint on each color.

I also had planned on using a paint marker to differentiate the waves, but again I made the wrong choice in marker. I should have purchased the oil based marker for better coverage! The water based just doesn’t cover as well and I ended up having to draw the lines on multiple times and even use white paint in some instances.

You can see the poor coverage from the cheap acrylic paint.

But I Love the End Result:

For my first time painting a mural, I felt like it went surprisingly well. I knew there would be kinks to work out, so I was patient with the process and problem solved along the way. And of course I texted my best friend (another artist) through the entire process.

Now that my office is looking super pretty, I guess I had better clean it!