Adventures in Refurnishing Old Furniture, Pt. 2

One of the possessions I ended up with after my grandmother passed away in 2009 was this brown pine desk most likely from the 1940's.

She used it in her sewing room and when my family acquired it, my brother used it in his room for his desk which meant a hard surface to draw on when he was in really into shaded pencil drawings. When I was getting ready to move out for grad school, he decided that it was much too small for his needs and he didn't really fit into the desk any more at 6'2" so he gave it to me. Because of his work with pencils, the age of the piece, and the poor quality of the stain used on the pine, it was in poor shape and in desperate need of a new finish.  Also, this is probably the skinniest desk ever made, if my legs were any wider, I wouldn't fit either. It must have been designed for a child in mind. It probably didn't bother my grandma because she was a very petite woman, and now looking back, I don't think she actually sat here much since she had a taller table for her sewing machine. However, I had to search specifically for a chair that would fit into that tiny little gap the left in between the drawers. The final issue I had with this desk, was the drawer in the middle. When you sat down at it, your knees would hit the bottom of the drawer. I wanted to use this to do homework so sitting at a desk where your knees didn't fit under for long periods of time didn't exactly sound appealing to me. I decided to take the drawer out, which really just came down to popping out a couple support boards. All the drawers were otherwise in fantastic working condition with the exception of a couple of bottoms I had to pop back into place and the little metal tracks that I had to nail back into place.


Once I removed the middle drawer it made a world of difference and fit my needs significantly better.

Step one: take that silly top drawer out. Step two: sand that bad boy down like crazy! Step three (and many many hours later after sanding): purple, my favorite color! Step four: Chevron pattern for the top. The chevron pattern was all the rage in 2013, I mean it was on everything! I'm sure this pattern has been around for a while, but everyone designed everything like this for a year or so and I was no exception to that rule. Taping it off made it almost not worth completing the pattern because of how long it took me. I know I followed some tutorial but I attempted and failed miserably at keeping the pattern straight just by eye balling it and even with the help of the tutorial. In then end, I think it was just as easy/helpful to use another piece of tape (that I kept peeling off and moving) to guide my pattern. The green contrast color went perfectly with the bedding I picked out and rag rug that I made one winter break.

Hello green accent!

The finished project was everything I could've dreamed of. I currently use the desk in my sewing room and still spend many hours slaving away around the comfort of the well-organized craft drawers and the stylish pattern on top (haha). Something I'm really glad I did was coat the top with left over epoxy from my bottle cap kitchen table. I was fearful that the paint would chip away like the stain did, so the epoxy ensured a nice clean, smooth finish on top. The only bad part about epoxy on top is that it'll probably take a whole heck of a lot more effort if I ever attempt to refinish this piece again.

The finished project! I love my little sewing area and the bright colors make me happy. The epoxy really gives the top a nice easy to clean sheen too.

Here's my space, very organized is how I like it! However, this is not always how it looks! There are generally clothes to be fixed and half finished projects everywhere. Also, my pup Gage got into this picture and says hi! He normally sits at my feet when I sew :)