Sometimes it takes me a while to come up with a catchy/clever name for my blog post, but this time around it came to me pretty quickly. I completed a custom order desk for a young girl in high school. She reminded me a lot of myself- organized, school oriented, diligent, and above all she knew what she wanted. I met with her and her mother to see and consult over the desk. It was the young girls great great great grandfather’s (I’m pretty sure that is correct), and it had been sitting in the basement for 17 years. The young girls parents had planned on doing it, but life happens, and it never got done! The desk was in rough shape to say the least. It has been painted years ago, but the paint had semi peeled off, and the bottom legs were missing chunks of wood:
The daughter and her mother asked if I could try to fix the missing wood pieces, and I was obviously up for the challenge. I probably went through two containers of wood filler. I had to build up the filler, sand it down, shape it, and repeat. I did the best I could. These pictures don’t look so hot because its wood filler, but with the finished product you can’t even see the difference!
Once the piece was sanded and prepped, it was finally ready to be painted. The girl picked two colors, a nice cream white for the base and a nice bright yellow for the top (hence my “bright idea” blog title…. I know I know, I’m good!).
The desk was completely transformed, it was nice and smooth and freshly painted. I ever so slightly distressed the detailing of the desk so that it would highlight the intricate work. The craftsmanship on this desk is incredible, and the creamy white wasn’t doing those details any justice. The light distressing truly completed it.
We hit a speed bump when it came to the hardware though. So strange, usually antique pieces don’t have hardware that is standard hole to hole, it’s usually all weird sizes. Well we ordered some beautiful hardware, but when I went to put them on, they didn’t fit. We ordered 2.5″ because that is what I measured, but I was off by .5″… how could that be? I didn’t think to measure other drawers because why would they be different? So the mother and daughter went on hunt and found enough 3″ handles to finish he piece right? Wrong. When I delivered the desk, and I was putting on the hardware some of the 3″ handles were too big, and I was right back a the 2.5″ hole to hole spread. What the??? Yeah, well it turns out that the bottom drawers are a 3″ spread, and the top drawers are 2.5″ so very strange. Anyway, the pictures below are of the finished piece, but hardware is missing on the top drawers. The mother and daughter were going to take the time to find a matching set.
Renewed Reloved 