I’ve spent a few days now working on my pendant lamp to go beyond my desk in the studio, but I’ve also been thinking a lot about how I want to make the desk. For a while now I have been planning to paint the office. But I also bought some drawers that mount under the desktop to make pens, pencils, sticky notes, etc. easier to access. So I also had to think about how to hide those drawers.
This is what the desk looks like now, so you can see that if you mount the drawers at the bottom of the desk top, the sides and backs of the drawers will be clearly visible.
I want the office to be lighter, brighter and look more feminine. I’m still not sure about the colors. I might go with all white, or I might go with white and gold. I haven’t decided yet but what I do know is that I want to end up with something that looks like this desk from Wayfair, with a relatively open back, but with nice panels on the sides.
So I plan to remove the “V” design from the back of the desk, move the bottom horizontal support to the top, and then add supports on the side at the same height. I will add plywood panels inside that area to hide the drawers, so you won’t actually be able to see through that upper area.
I’m going to leave the back open, but then I want to add some decorative panels to the sides.
This is as far as my plan has come in my mind. I’ve been online several times over the past week looking for the perfect shingles to use in these areas, and I’m having a really hard time deciding. Here are some possibilities.
I have to keep in mind that any boards I buy will have to be scaled down, so I won’t leave out the entire design. But if you can find one big enough to get both sides of one board out, it could make the project cheaper. For example, Kirkland has this large board that is large enough that I can cut it in half and use each half on each side of the desk. I’m going to flip each half vertically so the flowers rise up instead of sideways.
This is my vision and my plan. I’m having a lot of trouble finding the right board(s) to use. The part I’m not really sure about is whether I should use the more geometric design boards or the more floral design boards. I like the idea of adding a floral element to this area of the room, but I also don’t want to have too many flowers. I always love a geometric pattern used with a floral pattern, so I like this idea too.
Anyway, here’s the plan, and I’m looking for the perfect wood panel(s) that I can use on the sides of my desk. I’m really excited to start making this change. Lightening up the color and design of this desk will go a long way toward making this area look finished. In fact, once the lighting is done, the desk and chair are the final big projects for the room! I can see the finish line!
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I repurpose and decorate a 1948 fixer upper that my husband Matt and I purchased in 2013. Matt has MS and is unable to do physical labor, so I do most of the work Working at home by myself. You can learn more about me here.
