Saturday, May 21, 2011

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.

Before (4)

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.

grandma's desk 002

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.

grandma's desk 005

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.

grandma's desk 012

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

grandma's desk 017

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.
grandma's desk 023

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.

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