20 Inspiring Secretary Desks

I just managed to get a secretary desk on the French website Le Bon Coin (like eBay, but no bidding). It only costs €20 and seems to be made of oak, there doesn’t seem to be any woodworm and it seems solid (except for a little gap between one of the drawer bases and the frame).

It has lovely details; here are some images below…

 

 

It obviously needs some work doing and I plan to paint. I’d also planned to cover the damaged leatherette interior, but as you can’t remove it this would be a bit hard. So I’ve turned to inspiration from Pinterest and these are my ideas.

Colour

 

 

 

I love all of these colours, although the top left and right look like they have a bit more technique then a quick coat of paint to them. I don’t mind this normally, but I’m planning to do something a bit special with the carved central detail, and as we have so much to do in the house then I want the main paint colour to be a simple task.

The bottom right image is simple and effective and the shot of the interior is making me lean towards copying that.

Interior

 

 

I love all of these interiors, but as I said above the pink against the ivory is lovely and would really suit my dining room where I’m going to put it. I do love that gold and purple though.

Writing area

 

 

As I can’t remove the leatherette I’m going to have to look for other ways to deal with it. The picture on the left above is actually a stencil, and paint with a stencilled design could be a good option (maybe I can get that gold with the pink?!). The other option is to decoupage?

Details

 

 

These gold highlighted details are both beautiful, I think that gold details on the ivory would work? The alternative is to do a pink exterior, with white details and a white interior?

Carved centre

 

 

The central, carved feature is crying out for a painted area, and I have actually handprinted roses on furniture before. The image on the left has the side panels painted too, and theres similar on mine. The greens not bad either. Mmmmm…maybe I’ll change my mind regarding the colour?

What do you think?