The Parrot Room
This post is brought to you in partnership with Spoonflower.com.
What do you do when you inherit a 32-year-old Blue & Gold Macaw from your childhood best friend’s (still my best friend) mom? Well, obvi you design a room around him.
Meet Max. He came to live with us just after we moved into this house in 2022. It was decided that the best place for his GINORMOUS blue cage was the dining room—which was and still is being used as my office space (until we can build out my future chicken studio space). Putting a macaw in my office was definitely…a choice. There is nothing more professional on a work call or zoom meeting than a macaw screaming or singing opera in the background. It’s fine! It’s fine.
We hadn’t gotten started yet on any home remodeling projects when Max arrived, and so the office was still very much a blank white slate (if you’ll recall, our 1940’s Monterey Revival style home had unfortunately fallen into the hands of some pretty unskilled flippers who tried to turn it into a “modern white farmhouse” and did it very poorly at that…more on that later). These stark white primer-only walls and builder grade trim, etc, are what I like to refer to as flipper chic.
Here’s how the room looked before we moved in…keep in mind that this is technically the dining room or breakfast nook, which had been opened up to the kitchen. Which is not at all ideal for an office space (temporary office space). However, it’s pretty ideal for a parrot room.
And once Max moved in, the “flipper chic-ness” of the room only served to emphasize just how big, and how blue that monster of a bird cage is—it obviously overwhelmed the small space, but giving him a smaller cage was not an option, and moving him to another room with less activity was also not an option. He likes to be in the center of the action. And if you know anything about parrots, and especially macaws, if they’re not the center of attention, you (and your belongings) will suffer the consequences.
Gimlet was fascinated with Max and his cage when he first arrived.
Fortunately, Max and his perilously sharp beak were not interested in Gimlet.
So when I set about designing the room around Max and his cage, I knew I needed to go hard with the blue. Ideally with a heavily patterned blue wallpaper that would cause the cage to visually “disappear” a bit. And when I stumbled upon this Edwardian Parrot wallpaper design by @peacoquette for Spoonflower.com, I knew that it was a resounding YES. Not only did it hit the exact right blue note, it’s also super colorful (which you know I love) AND IT HAS PARROTS. Need I say more.
It became my jumping off point for the design of the room. Here’s my little mood board (all sources linked at the bottom of the post).
Besides the decor having to match my bird and camouflage his cage, it also needed to actually function as my office. So I needed a desk, and as much storage as I could stuff in around that big ol’ cage. But also….I wanted to upcycle and repurpose whatever furniture I could from my old office. So we cobbled together the desk from some old file cabinets and an old ikea desk, then cut and trimmed a new desktop to fit over the top of all that. My old green desk chair worked great here, with the addition of a cute striped pillow (a fabric design by @bobbieval and made into a velvet throw pillow by Spoonflower.com). A vintage secretary desk that’s been in my family forever adds more storage and an additional little fold down work surface.
Another very important part of this room was glassware and barware storage. I needed display cabinets, and there was very limited space for them, so they needed to count. We decided to customize some Ikea Billy Bookcases. There is lots of DIY content floating around on the interwebs about how to make these fairly inexpensive cabinets look more like built-ins. Essentially, you’ve got to prime and paint them, and you’ve got to trim the top and bottom with crown molding and baseboard. We also added a sweet little beaded trim along the door glass. Was it easy to customize the billy bookcase? It was pretty straightforward, but it was definitely time consuming. Was it worth it? Hell yes. We love them. They turned out great IMO.
In the following images, you can also see that we added french doors to the room entry in an effort to close off at least one part of the house from my workspace (have I mentioned how much I hate open concept? Especially in a 1940’s house that wasn’t actually meant for it).
Window treatments were also very important in this room. The big main window faces east and just gets blasted with light for the first half of the day. I needed me some light-blocking roman shades, and while I happened to have some leftover from the old house, they didn’t match my parrot-blue aesthetic. Enter the Blue & Pink Vertical Stripe design by Sharon Cloutier for Spoonflower.com in their Linen Cotton Canvas option (side note: Spoonflower has such an awesome variety of fabric choices).
I’m not a sew-er, so I set about covering the existing shades with nothing but fabric glue and a Stitchy gun. And you know what? It worked amazingly well! I’ll have to do a tutorial. My only caveat is that the existing shades (sometimes you gotta just use what ya got, yanno?) had a wide tan and white stripe fabric, and when the light hits the shades, you can see the ghost shadow of those wider stripes. So if I was doing this project again, I’d use off-the-rack white roman shades. But overall, they look custom and function beautifully and I’m super pleased with how they turned out.
And finally, here’s a photo round-up of all the little details: artwork, tchotchkes, collections, etc. that add the finishing touches to the space. Lots of vintage ceramic parrots and parrot art found their way into the room, because: DUH. My collection of vintage and antique seltzer bottles sits along the front window, and that vintage parrot perch used to be a tall hanging bird cage stand that my brother cut down and re-welded for me so that I could make it into a desktop perch for Max. And we couldn’t omit a comfy window bed for the cats.
I love this room. It makes me happy every single time I look at it. Max probably doesn’t GAF about the decor but he definitely loves to sit on his perch in the front window and watch the world go by and then climb down, ticky-tacky his little toenails across my desk and climb up on my shoulder while I work at my computer. It’s not distracting at all. 😆
A very heartfelt thank you to Spoonflower.com for providing us with our glorious wallpaper and fabrics. It truly is a magical site filled with endless, endless home decor possibilities. I cannot recommend their products enough.
Product SOURCES:
Wallpaper: Peel and Stick Edwardian Parrot by @peacoquette for Spoonflower.com
Paint: Sophisticated Teal by Behr
Window treatment fabric: Vertical Stripe in Blue and Pink by Sharon Coultier for Spoonflower.com in Linen Cotton Canvas
Pink marshmallow light fixture: Amazon
Glassware cabinets: customized Billy Bookcases from Ikea
Desk: upcycled but the file cabinet parts are from the Bedford Modular Collection by Potterybarn and the center desk drawer section is a Lommarp Desk from Ikea with the back railing cut off
Desk chair: Zarek Midcentury Upholstered Office Chair from World Market
Desk chair throw pillow: Bold Stripes in Orange Red and Blush Pink by @bobbieval for Spoonflower.com in Performance Velvet
Desk top circular parrot perch: vintage/upcycled
Secretary desk and sideboard: vintage
Cat bed: a seasonal design from Petsmart that is no longer carried
Parrot linograph art: vintage
Green parrot print: Vintage Tropical Parrots on Pink Background by Elissa Hayes Art on Etsy.com
Novelties sign: Handmade by moi
Mirrored wall sconces: Oval Antique Mirrored Sconce by Magnolia.com
This post is brought to you in partnership with Spoonflower.com.
More home decor stuff:
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