My Little Vintage School Desk is Finally Refinished!

Original post by Sarah @ Renewed Upon a Dream, please visit her website for more great ideas!”

I shared this project over at College Hill Renovation as a guest post for Rachel a couple of weeks ago.  I love that Rachel is practically my neighbor!  We live in the same town.  It makes me smile when I find other like-bloggers who live by me.  I also love this project I’m about to show you.  It’s now one of my favorite things in my house.

A while back, I wrote about a little school desk that I found at our local consignment shop, that I purchased for myself for my birthday.  Well, that little desk has been sitting in our living room in all it’s scratched up, stained, orangey glory for the past couple months & I finally decided what I wanted to do with it, and got around to making it happen.  Sometimes I’m a little slow at these things… it’s okay though.  Here is how my little desk looks now!

We use it as a table right next to the front door.  It’s a great place to stash the little things we want to drop off, and the little seat is a great place for my husband to sit to put his shoes on so that he doesn’t track mud through the house.  Here’s how it’s been looking for the past couple of months.

I thought about painting the desk, which seemed like the easiest option, but I felt like I’d loose some of the character of it if I did that, and so I wanted to stain it dark to match my coffee table, but I didn’t want it to be too plain.  So I decided to do some stripes!  Aren’t they fun?

First thing first I had to sand the desk down.  This was the most time consuming part of this project.  I got out my sander & went to town on it, first using a courser sandpaper, then finishing it off with a finer sandpaper.  I made sure to get all of the old finish off, which is why it took so long.  I also made sure to get everything around the edges, as these would need to be re-stained as well.

Next I taped off where I wanted my stripes to be.  I decided that each part of the desk, seat, seat back, desk piece, should have the same stripe.  Once I was sure my tape was secure, I painted one layer of white paint in the stripes, let it dry just a bit, then carefully pulled off the tape.  My lines looked fabulous.  I left them for a couple of hours to dry really well before sanding them a bit to make them a little less perfect.

The next step was to stain.  I used a dark stain because that’s what I had, and it is what I have used on other projects.  I love dark wood!  So I wiped on the stain with a sponge brush, and immediately wiped it back off with a rag.  I didn’t leave it on very long to penetrate the wood because I didn’t want it to be too dark.

After I got the whole thing stained, I was pretty excited with how it looked!  Stain has to be left alone a while to sink in & dry before you can finish it, so I left it for a few days like that.

To seal it, I used a wipe on poly by Minwax.  I find that this is pretty easy to use on these types of projects.  I used 3 coats, applied over 3 days, sanding between coats.

I think it turned out pretty well don’t you?  I love that I decided to add the little extra detail of the stripes.  My husband likes that the stripes are just a little different in size.

I think it looks kind of like a race car desk…. no?  Just me?  Ok.

Anyway, I’m SO happy with it.  I can’t believe I waited 2 months to get started on it!  What do you think?

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