In Focus

What have I gotten myself into?

As I continue working on refinishing furniture pieces for my room, this piece is taking every bit of time and energy I have; way more than I had anticipated.

I enjoy having a makeup vanity. I currently have a beautiful pink one with a matching chair. I had to think long and hard about this. I love it, but the pink won’t match the new red and black theme for my room. It came down to not having the heart to paint over the pretty pink vanity. So, I searched for a new one.

I cannot believe how expensive these things were! Between online shopping, garage sales, and online sell-it sites, they easily ran $150 plus. I’m trying to stay within a budget here. Even old desks were expensive. Just when I started to think I was going to have to bite the bullet and spend way more money than I wanted to...it appeared...

I was browsing on Marketplace, and this antique desk caught my attention. It had so many details in the wood and more drawers than what I currently have. I knew this was the one. Even better, it was only $40. Instantly, I thought to myself “sold”.

Mom and I made the trek to Baxter to pick it up. It had many, many layers of paint on it, but it was solidly made and quite heavy. The lady I bought it from was a realtor and obtained it while cleaning out a house. The drawers had no handles and we couldn’t even get them to slide out.

We got the desk home, and I got to work getting the drawers out. That was a process. The paint was so thick, they got stuck in place and I had to pry them out with a screwdriver. The last drawer, which was the most severely stuck, finally broke loose and came out. It contained porn DVDs. Those went into the garbage. Then the paint stripper was applied. Hours later the gray and white paint came off, revealing black, blue, red, and purple layers. My question was...just how many times had this thing been painted?

I continued the process through the entire weekend and finally was able to see the wood.

I could tell this desk was beautiful back in the day. It was a mottled walnut wood.

The past few days I have been picking paint out of the grooves and around the carved wooden inlays to bring the detail back to this desk before it gets painted. I still have more cleaning and sanding to do. I was really hoping to get this finished over the three-day weekend.

The plan is to paint it a high gloss black. That should help bring out the details. The drawers and top will be covered with silver contact paper with a black damask pattern. And I purchased some skull damask drawer knobs.

I can’t wait to see the finished product if it ever gets to that point. I’ve been working on this for two weeks already, going on week three. Here’s hoping...soon...