Pages

I'm not a cookie cutter wife or mom. I make mistakes, but I try to learn from them. I'm not perfect, but I love my life...and isn't that everything?

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

The Little Yellow Desk

Ok, I'm doing this for real. I swear. Here we go...

This summer I got into redoing a desk to put in our dining room. We have an old farmhouse. Our dining room is blue with crisp white trim. I needed a space in there to keep the laptop, phone, mom business, etc. So away I went. I read up on a few other blogs on how to redo furniture...and unfortunately I couldn't even begin to tell you which ones or where I found the information to link it back, as I just took what information I found to be helpful and went from there. (Blog fail I know). I took what I found and put it together to best suit my needs...and honestly...motivation.

With an 8 and 2 year old running around I had to make this as easy as possible. My original plan was to paint a beautiful white and distress it. I (obviously) took off the hardware before I started.


1. I started with sanding. Aaaaand sanding and sanding. I used a hand sander. One of those beasts that vibrates your entire body and makes your hand go numb for hours. ha! This is where I became indecisive. The desk looked cool sanded unevenly and "distressed". Now...I had visions of sealing it right then and there! AND I had yellow in the back of my mind as an accent color to the dining room. So now, I wanted to refinish this desk 3 different ways...Here's the desk after that...

Yes I did a crappy job, no I don't care! haha!
2. After sanding I hit the edges w a quick layer of black spray paint. When I distressed it, I didn't want bare wood showing, but the dark.

3. I decided to go for it and paint the desk yellow. After all, it hadn't cost us a dime. If I ruined it, it wouldn't be the end of the world. I attempted to use a spray paint w primer and the desk rejected it. It bubbled and just flat out repelled in some spots. So, after that debacle, I decided to use a canned paint and put it on with a foam roller. That went much better.

4. In between coats I sanded and painted more. I lost count of how many coats, but I just kept going until I was satisfied with the coverage.

5. When the desk was all painted, I finished it with Johnson's Paste Wax, especially the top. Let me tell you, that stuff gives you a workout (either that or I did it wrong). Ha!



Here is the finished product!!



It brings a little ray of sunshine into our little home. And isn't that everything?



 ~Andrea

No comments: