Furniture Upcycle

Here's the latest project! I had a blast refinishing upcycling this old desk into something more beautiful! 

Here's the before picture. Actually this is not quite the desk as you can see mine has a writing slide-out in the front. But being somewhat scatter brained as of late (I'll blame it on the baby) I forgot to take a picture of the before. However, this is almost the same thing. Pine desk from IKEA. Super boring, and kinda ugly... and definitely doesn't match the house decor or vibe we are aiming for around here.

SO.... I crammed it into my little craft room out back. This is a lovely space to work in. It's a little tight for furniture projects, but its all windows which feels awesome and I have a great view of the "mountain" to beat! This room used to be a deck that someone enclosed up with windows so it's a bit of solarium kinda feel. We call it the "inside outside room" and it's the perfect place for your mid morning coffee break. When it's not full of projects that is.

The supplies I used for this upcycle included:

stain: dark walnut (by minwax) This is my go to colour when I want something nice and dark but not too red or grey. It's perfectly warm, but still definitely brown. 

applied with a rag and just rub it right in!

paint: AURA edgecomb grey (by benjamin moore) This was leftover paint from our master bedroom. I originally though I was going to distress this up a bit, but after getting the paint on there I liked it so much I just left it clean. Nice and creamy without being yellow. It compliments the top well. 

applied with a brush. It took 1.5 coats,  but the wood was raw when I started so it really should have been primed first, but I didn't have any kicking around.

Lastly I sealed the top with a semi-gloss varnish to give it some durability and water resistance. I'm so happy with how it turned out! It's NEVER this clean and ALWAYS covered in papers, laptops and other signs of life, but I had to take advantage of the moment ;)

And just for fun a close up of my typewriter. Passed down from my dad from my grandmother. It needs a little bit of a tune up, but it still works. In fact this was the guest book at our wedding!

Now go get creating!
Sarah