Couple With No DIY Skills Turn ‘Cupboard of Doom’ Into Dream Office Space

A mother from Scotland has gained viral attention after transforming an unused cupboard under her stairs into a fully functioning home office.

Lori Donaldson, 32, who lives with her husband and two children, explained that she wanted a home office away from both her bedroom and family areas.

“We live in a semi-detached, three bedroom house and I have two kids. I wanted to separate my working space from my sleeping space, so that my work set up wasn’t one of the first things I saw in the morning, and didn’t want to compromise our family space by setting up in the lounge,” Donaldson told Newsweek.

The solution? A cluttered cupboard used for storage under the stairs, turned into a cozy workstation, complete with desk, chair and computer. 

Underneath the stairs at the couple’s home was a small cupboard, but behind the little door was actually a reasonable amount of unused space. Inspired, the pair got to work creating the perfect home office with a little DIY.

“This cupboard was a dead space and I needed an office… Husband to the rescue,” Donaldson said in a viral TikTok video, viewed more than 1.3 million times, which can be seen here. She showed how her “clever husband” got to work ripping out frames and walls.

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DIY Makeover

The makeover wasn’t quick. Donaldson and her husband tackled the project over several months, squeezing in work between busy schedules.

“In total, probably about five full days of work, but this was split over eight weekends. As you can imagine, having two kids as well as my husband working full-time, me working part-time and having volunteering commitments and my kids having extra-curriculars and hobbies at weekends, life is busy,” she explained.

Her husband knocked frames down and fixed the walls, while Donaldson took on taping, filling, sanding and painting. In the video Donaldson admitted there was a moment when “deep regret” started to creep in, and a learning curve when they started to add sheet walls: “Neither of us had a clue what we were doing here,” she laughed.

Together they fitted wooden moldings, built furniture and accessorized the space.

The transformation came in at around £500 ($671) in total, thanks to sourcing materials from local stores. The most expensive part of the project was the desk—something Donaldson said was worth investing in.

“It has given me such a cozy space where I can be comfortable working and an switch off after work, rather than having to look at my work station in my bedroom or worry about where the best place to sit for a work call is,” Donaldson said. 

Donaldson is not alone in needing a suitable space to work at home. Remote working rose sharply during the pandemic, and while some companies have taken staff back into the office since, hybrid work (working between home and the office) is increasingly normalized in the U.S., with around a third of U.S. employees working remotely at least part of the time, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This comes as a recent study by FlexJobs found that 63 percent of workers said that remote working is more important to them than a higher salary.

After creating the space, Donaldson shared the makeover on her TikTok where the video has been viewed 1.3 million times. 

She shared the process as a simple way to show people the process from start to finish, and was amazed by the reaction. 

“The reaction is wild! I could never have expected it to blow up like that,” she said. “Maybe it’ll encourage me to document the next project we do, once we work out what it’ll be.”

This isn’t the first time a home office makeover has inspired the internet. In 2022 another homeowner shared their simple home office upgrade in a post that wowed Reddit.