DIY- Vintage Inspired Desk
so here is my desk: a mess
old, needing to be spiced up...decluttered...etc..
OK so embarrassing story alert:
So this desk that you see here, I have had for a few years. My mother actually saw that my neighbor down the street was actually throwing this away and had it on the street for pick up. She decided we should take it for me and I had to help her! I had no choice in the matter so down the street I went. I am sure from the outside looking in, it looked pretty hilarious seeing two women under 5 feet hauling this desk down the road to my house! HAHA!
We cleaned it up and it came out to be quite functional! I have been having the urge to paint my furniture for a while now but never got around to it. I kept saying I will wait until I move or something but I got tired of waiting!
I started noticing this new fad of people painting their furniture with chalk paint or “chalky finish”. These paints are actually made with chalk in them and are easy to distress. There is also no need for sanding down the furniture first! I became so fascinated with this because I love the vintage looks of worn down wooden furniture with pretty colors! I decided it was now or never
(image from crafthaven.com) color-timeless
I wanted a color that looked almost ivory. I felt it would be a nice contrast to my bright blue wall color! I also had two frames over the desk with a similar color and an interesting finish that almost looked “wood-like” but was not wood! The frames also had a distressed gold lining within the frame. I wanted to match this style somehow!
So first things first. I am sure you already know to remove hardware first! Which is what I did. I originally wanted to replace all of the handles to something that looked more vintage but felt that could be costly. However, when I actually finished painting, I found that I like how they look way better on the finished product rather than the wood it was before.
Next was spray paint! I don’t know why I decided to do this after the sun went down. I am weird I know. Luckily I have light on by back deck!
As you can see below, I used metallic gold spray paint around the edges of the drawers. I chose to do this because when I was going to work on distressing, I was going to focus more on the edges as this resembles natural wear and tear of furniture. I did not want it to look so “blah” and show the same wood under there after I did this so I felt that having bits of metallic gold peeking through would be nice! So I did these to all of the drawers and some small decorative things I found around the house that I felt would add a nice touch to the desk.
That metal wire thing you see there is actually my filing system! It was meant to go in a file drawer to hold hanging file folders but I wanted something inexpensive to hold mine as the drawers are not wide enough for the folders. Instead I put this on top of the desk. I spray painted this gold as well because the metal color it was before looked so bland.
The spray paint dried up pretty quickly so I took the drawers inside and started painting them with the Timeless chalk paint. Notice how I painted all over. Everything got two coats of paint.
So I was going to same the actual desk for the next day as I did not want to carry it down the stairs! Instead I got a head start on painting the top with the chalk paint. Even though I did wait until the next day to spray paint the edges of the desk, I did in inside like a weirdo again! I had the door open and the fan on! I put plastic bags everywhere as well to protect the walls and floors!
Again, I focused on the edges...
So here is the desk after it was fully painted with the chalk paint
There were some areas where I did not go over much at all just to have a little more of that gold showing.
I went ahead and slowly started sanding the edges. I added hardware back on the put the drawers back in.
Isn’t it cool how some gold speckles peek through? I feel that the unevenness of how much gold is where makes it look more authentic.
Here is how it looks from far away after cleaning up the area a bit! I moved the computer over to the side because I felt I needed space on the desk where I could draw/ write etc. If you are wondering about the dumbbell that you see, that is just where I keep it for easy access when I work out! HAHA! My room is quite small.
You can see those frames I was talking about. Turned out to be a pretty good match! I plan on changing the images in the frames as well!
Here is what I added to the top of the desk. IT feels less cluttered now. I had way too much before. I added my colored pencils to that red porcelain container that I showed earlier that I spray painted. I also used the same technique on it.
The business card holder was painted by my boo when we went to go paint pottery. He was not proud of his work at all but I saved it because it is abstract art to me :)
For those wondering about my file system, here is how it looks with the gold paint! It also has that little mail system there so that whoever gets the mail can just put mine there. It also means that there is action to be taken if it is in there. This is actually a napkin holder from the dollar store but I felt it would be cute to use it this way!