November 12, 2014

Always Never Done: Curbside Pick-up Desk Revived with Paint

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Hello again G2B friends, it's Amy again from Always Never Done! Hopefully you are all settling into fall nicely. I surely am considering it’s my favorite season. Fall is a great time to clean out the house for those colder months coming too soon which leads me to my next project. 

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Someone must have been doing a wee bit of cleaning when I found this cute little desk sitting in a yard with a FREE sign propped up against it. As you can guess I made a quick pit stop and came home with a new little friend.

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Structurally the desk was in great condition it just needed some paint. So I started off by taking the drawers out, removing the handles and lightly sanding the whole desk so that my primer and paint would adhere oh so nicely.

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For slightly larger projects like this one, I like to use a paint sprayer to get nice even coats. (Not to mention you can get it painted super fast.) I used HomeRight’s Finish Max Fine Sprayer to prime and paint. I did one coat of Zinsser primer and 2 coats of white paint. ( I used what I had sitting around at home since we use plenty of white in our house.)
I didn’t want to do anything super fancy to this desk because I thought it would look really modern if it was painted in one solid color. The slanted legs and the straight lines on this desk were begging to be modernized. You can’t go wrong with white in my eyes!!!
After the 2 coats of paint on the desk dried I needed to protect the paint with a topcoat. I chose to use Minwax Polycrylic protective finish in clear semi-gloss. I love this stuff. It’s very user friendly and dries quickly. What more could we ask!! I brushed 2 coats of this on with a Purdy synthetic bristle brush at a 45 degree angle and was careful not to over brush it. Like I said, it is very user friendly. I sanded lightly in between coats with a fine finishing sponge as well so that the next coat would adhere nicely.

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I loved the pulls that came with the desk but they needed some cleaning and few new screws. I went back to my good old Brasso! This stuff never fails me. It’s a metal polish that smells to the high heavens so I recommend doing this in a well ventilated area but man it does a good job! I squeezed it on the knobs rubbed it in really good and then buffed it off. DONE!!!

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I also decided to line the drawers with some pretty adhesive shelf liner that I found at the dollar for you guessed it $1.

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Now she’s all ready to for the world to use her again!

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This project was so easy with use of a spray painter but even if I didn’t have it, all it needed was a coat of paint. Not bad for a desk that I got for free on a whim. So next time you see a free sign on a piece of furniture, grab it, or someone else will!