Pretend That Super Ugly Door Is a Window, Become Instantly Happier
There are a lot of upgrades you can make to your rental so it feels less hasn't-been-touched-since-the-'80s, but replacing the scuffed, dented side door? Yeah, probably never going to happen. Painting said door? Also likely not allowed. That leaves giving up . . . or stealing a genius idea from blogger Joy Cho of Oh Joy! and designer Sarah Sherman Samuel.
Sarah recently designed Joy's new executive office, transforming a white box into one of the cheeriest work spaces we've ever seen. This is not your average cubicle-ridden office, folks. You don't even notice the fact that there's an industrial door lurking in a corner. "My executive office was previously the entrance and reception area of the building," Joy explains. "Since I wanted to use it as a private office, we had to figure out a way to close off the 'entrance' door so that it would visually redirect visitors to an alternate entrance and also hide the door from the inside as well." The solution is so simple it's kind of mind-boggling: curtains.
"The entry door was rather unsightly, but as part of a larger commercial building it wasn’t something we could change," says Sarah. "Since Joy doesn’t even use this door, we installed curtains to treat it like a large window, which helped to disguise the less attractive parts." Even better, the pretty seafoam green curtains happen to be a basic blackout design from Target. Pair 'em with a shiny brass rod (matte black would be cool, too) and that heinous door is officially hidden. You could almost trick yourself into believing there's a sweeping view of rolling hills behind there.
