My Cozy Work Area With Built-In Desk

We created a functional desk with bookshelves out of an awkward, unusable space. Here’s a little tour of my cozy work area with a built-in desk.

Our old house has a lot of quirks and not a lot of storage space, but somehow, some of the most challenging areas turn out to be the most beautiful and the best storage areas, too. I love when a little corner of our home forces us to get creative and use our imaginations a bit. This space is in my daughter’s room, and I set out to update it when she went away to university a few years ago so that she’d have an inviting space to come home to when she’s back for holidays and vacations. I actually love this room so much now that I spend a lot of time up here, and have basically taken over this desk area as my own little office/study when she’s not home. It’s been awhile since I’ve shared this part of our home, so I thought I’d give you a little tour and an update.

You can see how this wall looked when we first built it here. You can see it was quite a bit more colorful, but we haven’t changed much to adapt it to a more grown-up style. That’s the beauty of good, classic design in a home, I think. 🙂

How We Created These Built-In Shelves With a Desk

Pictured Above: Mirror | Green gingham curtains (CREEKLINEHOUSE for 22% off) | Similar chair | White ceramic pitcher | Black pleated lampshade

The wall where we installed these DIY bookshelves was an awkward angled wall tucked in behind the door in an upstairs bedroom. It wasn’t really a great wall for anything and it turned this whole half of the room into wasted space. Adding the desk and the bookshelves gave this side of the room a purpose and made it feel like the weirdly placed wall made a bit more sense.

The shelving unit was designed to cover the full height of the wall, floor to ceiling, with a series of small compartments and cubbies that would allow us to store a lot of different little things in an organized and stylish way. Part of the shelving unit was left open to accommodate a small desktop area, and we trimmed the whole thing out with thoughtfully placed moldings to make the entire piece look like it’s always been here in our old house.

If you’re considering adding a built-in desk to your home, it doesn’t need to be as complicated as ours. Pre-cut custom desk tops can be purchased to fit a small nook for a worktop and even adding one or two simple shelves above will give you plenty of extra storage and a beautiful place to display collections as well.

More DIY renovation inspiration for your home: 8 Details That Instantly Make a House Feel Historical

Cozy Updates to Create a Welcoming Study Corner

Pictured Above: Faux leather desk blotter | French market tote (this is the best price I’ve seen for one of these) | Similar chair | Black pleated lampshade | Similar white pitcher

After giving this whole bookshelf area a fresh coat of paint, I filled the shelves with books and a few other things to make the space welcoming, functional, and enjoyable to use on a daily basis. Since I like to keep this space looking tidy and nicely styled all the time, I added a few baskets on the shelves to break up the rows of books.

The baskets add much needed texture to all the white-painted millwork, but they also let me hide away all my everyday necessities like pens, hair ties, and hand lotion.

I found this large scale piece of art work at an antique market and I love the equestrian/English country subject matter that feels right at home in our old house. The faux leather desk blotter adds warmth to the desk area as well and keeps the painted surface from getting marked up from daily use.

Since we don’t have an electrical outlet here, I removed the cord from the little lamp and added an LED bulb instead. This works beautifully to light this tiny area. LED bulb technology has come a long way and I can use this lamp every night for weeks without needed to recharge.

My chair was also a lucky antique market find and brings so much personality and comfort to this little corner. I always prefer a comfy upholstered chair to a standard desk chair for my work area and this one allows me to settle in, get comfortable, and do my best work.

More home upgrades that you can build yourself (or with a little help): Built-In Storage Ideas From Our 120-Year-Old Farmhouse

What I Would Have Done Differently With Our Built-In Desk

Although, I absolutely love this little corner of our home and I’m so thankful to have this space to escape to, there are definitely a few things that I would change if we did this again. This was one of the earlier projects that we did on this house and our skills and design sense have definitely improved over time. We decided not to mess with adding electrical to this wall because it seemed a little too unnecessarily difficult at the time, but now this is something that we’d be a lot more comfortable with after updating electrical in many other areas of our home. I would definitely add a plug to this wall and probably a small sconce or two to the desktop area as well if we did this again.

The other thing I think I would change is to make the actual desk top space a little bigger. While this desktop size was perfect for a little girl who liked to draw in our her room and needed shelves to hold her art supplies, she definitely could have used more space later on when she was in high school, and I could definitely use a bit more space for my laptop, a notebook, and a cup of tea.

Adding these shelves and this desk area brought so much functionality to our home without taking up much square footage, and this is one of the things I love most about built-in storage and furnishings.

Pictured in this post: Mirror | Green gingham curtains (CREEKLINEHOUSE for 22% off) | Similar chair | White ceramic pitcher | Black pleated lampshade | Faux leather desk blotter | French market tote (this is the best price I’ve seen for one of these)

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