Desk Redo

I’ve been wanting to try to redo some old furniture so when my great aunt offered me my great grandma’s desk, I snatched it up. I’m not sure how old it is, but my mom knows it is older than she is. So at a minimum, the desk is 50-something years old. When I first got it, I was worried if it would even survive the sanding process. It was pretty worn and the wood was cracking and brittle, but I went for it.

I forgot to take a picture before I started sanding the top, but you can get a pretty good idea of what it looked like before. Just ignore my messy garage in the background.

It took a lot of sanding, nails, wood putty, and glue to get in back in relatively decent shape. Then it was time to put the primer on.

This is a picture of the inside of the center drawer. It had horrible ink stains and it took about 5-6 coats of primer just to cover it.

Here it is after several coats of primer and ready to be painted.

And here is the final product after adding a couple of coats of antique linen paint. I wanted to buy new hardware, but because the desk is so old, the size of the holes were off by about 3/8” from the standard sized handles these days. I didn’t want to risk drilling new holes out of fear that the brittle wood would split so I just spray painted the old handles black and saved myself some cash.

Even the inside of the ink stained drawer looks pretty.
Grandma’s desk just got a new life. Now I just need to find a fun chair to keep it company.