Desk Makeover with Wallpaper Inserts for Under $100!

During my Black Friday online shopping spree this year, I splurged and bought myself a 27″ monitor for my home office, forgetting of course, that my desk had a hutch with an opening for a 20″ monitor. Oops! The monitor cost more than the desk, and I was thinking about making a change to this room anyway, so the oversize monitor gave me a good excuse to start desk shopping at Restore and on Craig’s list.

I found a super heavy solid wood desk on Craigslist for $60 and talked the guy into letting me take it for $50. He told me that it had belonged to a doctor who had it in his office since at least the 1970’s, possibly longer. When I opened the drawers, there were notes on pharmaceutical post-its in what looked like an older woman’s script labeling each drawer location. So cute!

The desk was fairly scratched and had several chips. It also had drawer pulls and I knew I wanted to use knobs instead, so I used some wood filler and wood glue to repair the broken parts. Then, after sanding, priming, painting, and polying, I wanted to give it a little bling, so I added some knobs from Homegoods, but still it wasn’t quite what I envisioned for the office.

I had some silver circle wallpaper from Lowes laying around that I bought because I loved it, even though I knew I would never put it on my walls (too much work). I thought the metallic silver in the wallpaper it might look good with the drawer knobs. I made a template out of cardboard and cut a pattern out of the wallpaper. I gave the pieces a quick coat of spray on polycrylic for protection and attached them to the drawers with dots. I then drilled the holes for the knobs though the center of the wallpaper pattern. It looks great next to the silver cabinet I painted a few weeks ago that has become a printer stand and paper holder. I used the same knobs on both the desk and the cabinet to help tie them together visually.

Cost to refinish:

$40 paint, poly, wood glue & wood filler
$26 knobs
$32 wallpaper
Total = $98

Desk Before

Old Hardware

Beat up along the the bottom

Desk waiting to be sanded

Scratches on top

Note from doctor’s secretary

Drawer pulls removed and holes filled with wood filler

Drawers waiting to be sanded

Dents and scratches smoothed with power sander

Nicks and holes filled in with wood filler

Hmmm… these would look good together….

Made a template from cardboard to make sure the drawer inserts would be the right size

Cut out the drawer inserts and added a coat of poly acrylic for protection

Note this is not the new monitor – this is my old 20″ iMac, but I loved the way the white and silver computer looked with the white desk so I used it as a prop.