Lord knows I need one~ I have family coming in this week from Seattle and San Francisco, my daughters 6th birthday party is this weekend, then I have 2 desks, a table and and an armoir to paint. Including a little vanity for said birthday girl. She sees all these pretty pieces come and go and gets a bit angry with me that none get to stay-in her room. So she's getting what she's coveted most; a vanity with the lift up mirror in the middle~I can't wait to give it to her!!
I'm so excited to have my Mom visit, it's hard being so far away and we've missed her terribly. We talk almost daily as she's also my own walking Britannica (she's an antiques dealer). I know we'll be comparing paint sprayers and distressing techniques as much as we'll be shopping and going for coffee ;) LOL
I wanted to share two desk makeovers I did recently that couldn't have been more different. I didn't use the chalk paint mixture for either of them (this was before I delved into that.) Just regular old latex.
The first one I picked up from an antique dealer in Austin who was clearing out her garage with her sons help (awww memories) and it was in worse shape than I realized. When I first saw it I thought "$40 bucks? SCORE!! Oh My Gosh...I am so running out of here before someone else gets it!! Here's your $, all the best, bye!" Then I got it home and saw that a huge piece of wood was missing on one of the legs, chipped veneer on all sides, and I went "What the heck were you thinking?? You didn't even check it out first, this is gonna take weeks, ugh....you @$%&......s-i-g-h." In fact I don't even have a before pic of it because I was SO sure it wasn't going to work out. But here it is after I stripped it, stained it, repaired all I could and painted it:
I then glazed it, sealed the body with minwax and sealed the top with wipe-on poly in satin. Here she be after her complete make-ovah! Drum roll please....
I think she was a natural beauty, just needed some serious "spa time" ;) Well, okay more like plastic surgery I guess. The next desk I picked up from a man who had just finished his PhD here and was selling everything fast as he could so he could go home to France to be with his wife. I was so taken with his story (and his accent) that I didn't even care about the desk, I just wanted to help him:) It was sturdy, solid wood and HEAVY...we carried it down from his 3rd floor studio to my van in record time though. He needed to pack, I needed to pick up my preschooler!
Once I got it home I tried stripping the top for staining, only to find that while yes, it was solid wood, the top was actually made of pressboard. Ce la vie! ;)
So I painted the whole thing in a matte charcoal black and bought new knobs from Vintage Skye and label pulls from Martha Stewarts collection to help jazz it up. I gave it a rubbed finish (hard to see in photos-sorry) and sealed with 2 coats minwax. Au revoir Monsieur!
Interestingly enough, the white desk went to a woman who'd just moved to Austin to begin completing her Masters degree. And the black one went to a lovely couple ready to 'makeover' their sons bedroom into an office now that he's moved out :) So cool! XOXO
I'm so excited to have my Mom visit, it's hard being so far away and we've missed her terribly. We talk almost daily as she's also my own walking Britannica (she's an antiques dealer). I know we'll be comparing paint sprayers and distressing techniques as much as we'll be shopping and going for coffee ;) LOL
I wanted to share two desk makeovers I did recently that couldn't have been more different. I didn't use the chalk paint mixture for either of them (this was before I delved into that.) Just regular old latex.
The first one I picked up from an antique dealer in Austin who was clearing out her garage with her sons help (awww memories) and it was in worse shape than I realized. When I first saw it I thought "$40 bucks? SCORE!! Oh My Gosh...I am so running out of here before someone else gets it!! Here's your $, all the best, bye!" Then I got it home and saw that a huge piece of wood was missing on one of the legs, chipped veneer on all sides, and I went "What the heck were you thinking?? You didn't even check it out first, this is gonna take weeks, ugh....you @$%&......s-i-g-h." In fact I don't even have a before pic of it because I was SO sure it wasn't going to work out. But here it is after I stripped it, stained it, repaired all I could and painted it:
 |
| You can see the big 'chunk' is still missing out of the right leg. The only thing I wasn't able to fix. |
I then glazed it, sealed the body with minwax and sealed the top with wipe-on poly in satin. Here she be after her complete make-ovah! Drum roll please....
 | ||||
| I kept her original hardware-so pretty! |
Once I got it home I tried stripping the top for staining, only to find that while yes, it was solid wood, the top was actually made of pressboard. Ce la vie! ;)
So I painted the whole thing in a matte charcoal black and bought new knobs from Vintage Skye and label pulls from Martha Stewarts collection to help jazz it up. I gave it a rubbed finish (hard to see in photos-sorry) and sealed with 2 coats minwax. Au revoir Monsieur!
You did such a beautiful job on these desks.
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