Rarely do I keep furniture for me. In fact, several of the pieces in my home that I had purchased years ago for myself are still awaiting their face-lift. Hopefully, that will soon be remedied as we continue to remodel our home. My treat-to-self is that once that room is completed, I can add the finishing touch of finally redoing whatever furniture belongs in there.
One of the rooms we are intending to remodel is our front living room, which would include a little office space for my husband and I. Back in my post about my garage mess stash, there was a little gem peeking out at you.
I found the antique desk on Craigslist almost 2 years ago and the chair was curbside during city cleanup.
I had tucked this sweet desk away intending to use it as my desk for my computer and office space.
While working through my stash, I wouldn’t let myself touch anything that would be for me until I had worked on everything else first. Motivation.
But, silly me should have known that there’s always another gem around the corner. tsk. I found a fantastic industrial oak desk (which I will reveal later) that is larger and has more storage for what I needed, so… I decided to sell my sweet little find.
The desk’s structure was in awesome shape and I just loved that carved braided edge. However the veneer was missing in large chunks on several of the drawer fronts, so that had to go. With the help of my little man (who gets paid per pull, by the way), the drawers were prepped for refinishing.
In my post, 10 Furniture Refinishing Essentials, I offered advice on how to remove veneer in the easiest way possible. After using the method of soaking the drawer fronts with a towel overnight, the veneer peeled off like butter off of hot toast.
Once the veneer was removed it leaves the surface rough, which was easily remedied by sanding them down to give me a fresh smooth surface to work with.
Since I knew I wanted to distress them a bit after painting, I stained them with a dark color so that it could peek through the paint.
Now for that gorgeous top…swoon! I would have loved to refinish the whole piece and stain, but since that veneer was missing the only choice was to paint.
You have to admit that paint with stain really rocks!
Can you believe the chair was out in the trash? That splat detail (that curved part of the back) is fantastic and I love how it accentuates the same shape and design of the original brass pulls on the desk.
Truth be told, I originally intended to use a different fabric for the seat and was trying to mix a paint color that would coordinate – fail. The paint color I ended up with I actually like better, and when I went to my fabric stash after I finished the desk, I couldn’t believe I had a fabric that would match perfectly. eek! I love it when that happens.
Enter in sellers remorse….do I sell it? …it’s just so lovely..hmmm…maybe I can keep it? This is one of the downfalls of this biz, if there is one. Not having enough room to keep everything you like can make one turn into a hoarder. I’m definitely a purger – just ask my kids.
I couldn’t be more happy with the way it turned out. You can imagine that it didn’t last long in my shop. One of my all-time best fans is Diane, and I’m super-excited it got a wonderful home with her. She even redecorated around the desk, and better yet, I just finished a custom dresser-turned-entertainment stand for the same room as her desk.
Maybe I’ll show you the dresser transformation if you ask. :o)
Okay…you asked. My client wanted a similar, but not identical color, so I mixed up a different color and here’s how it looks before…
previous owner’s photo
She didn’t want the mirror, so it’s mine for the taking, and the veneer was damaged so that needed removed. Overall, I couldn’t have been more happy with how it turned out. She loved it too!
I love a happy ending, don’t you?
It was painted black on only certain parts was to hide the fact that it has replaced doors. This is actually a Red Lion Cabinet Company radio cabinet with secretary desk on top. While the bottom was the space used to house the radio. You can see what this originally looked like 
I like to highlight some of my favorite pieces over the last year. One was an antique table makeover with 
