What HAVE I been doing lately? I was sick, I was busy, I was tired, all that. But I did a lovely little DIY to share with you…

I used to do most of my writing, homework, and blogging from this desk:

Uninspiring, isn’t it?

I thought for a long time about getting a new desk, but I really like this one in a lot of ways. It is solid. Heavy. Has lots of little cubbies. Yet the oak finish and the brass-and-porcelain hardware were so dated. I had a mess of cables and clutter everywhere. Something had to change.

It was time to paint.

Here’s what it really looked like, under the clutter:

Faux-oak back panel? Adios!

As part of the solution to the storage issue, I decided to mount my flat-panel monitor on the desk so I could put my laptop under it and run all the cables behind it, out of the way. I used to have it set on a book to get it to eye level. Cables were a huge part of the mess in the first picture. (Never mind the beer and the mac and cheese.)

So I built this brace with a couple of pieces of wood and gave it a few coats of paint. This was meant to go up on the back of the desk to hold the monitor arm. I used the same mount that I used on my TV that I put on the wall in my bedroom a few months ago. It’s perfect for my 20″ monitor.

But despite the fact that I measured and thought I had everything right, the monitor ended up lower than eye level. No good. This presented another problem – the monitor mount slides over the top of the backpiece, which is mounted on the brace. But the monitor is too tall for me to do that if I mount it any higher! I can’t get the mounting over the backpiece.

Soooo, I had to leave the monitor on the brace while I re-mounted it. This was scaaaary… I was so afraid I was going to drop it and kill the screen. But with the aid of a stack of books, I was able to balance it just right and get it screwed back in where it needed to be.

When the monitor was in place, I started in on a few more storage solutions. Since I planned to eliminate the big chunky desktop box where I previously stored all my pens and pencils and stuff, I decided to turn the keyboard tray into a drawer. I found these metal mesh bins for $3.00 each at Wal-Mart and tacked them each in with a penny nail. They even matched the silver-mesh desk accessories I’d already had for years. Perfect!

Then for the cubbies over the printer, I bought some plain cardboard magazine files at the Container Store. I was worried that sliding them in and out would chip the new paint surface, so I hot-glued some felt to the bottoms. I used the same felt to line the shelves of the cubbies over the main part of the desk as well. These files were actually too tall for the space, so I cut down the tops a bit and then finished them off with a little ribbon to hide the cut edges.

Those now hold all of my printer paper, stationery, receipt files and notebooks. The final touch was the back panel of the desk – no more faux-oak fiberboard, but I needed something to pull it all together and work with the dark color of the desk and the woodwork in the room, the light color of the files, and the dusky purple of the walls.

I spotted the perfect fabric at Hobby Lobby, and with the help of my trusty staple-gun, created a new back for the desk. I even worked it out to use panels of fabric behind the monitor section, so I could run all the monitor cables behind one panel and then up through another to the laptop – so there’s not a single cable dangling down from the monitor.

All of the desktop cables are clustered right around the laptop and then go right off the back. Some new brushed metal hardware is dressing up the drawers. And I covered the desktop with a few cheap pre-cut glass panels to protect the paint from chipping.

I’ll never be one of those people who has a clean, minimalist desk. It just won’t happen. But this is darn close, and I think it’s awesome.

I am in love with the fabric panels and how they tie in all the colors of the study, plus the pale blue of the living room right next to it. It’s not too cutesy but not too boring (and the coordinating ribbon was a nice bonus). I love my new magazine files and my little mesh-bin drawer. I love how the paint color matches the color of my bookcases and the lovely old woodwork and molding in that room. I love the free space from having my monitor up and my laptop under it. I can just set the keyboard on top of the laptop when I need the space in front of me to write or read.

And I love that now I have a desk where I love to blog. Hello again, guys!