Paint An Old Desk, step by step

Before we dive into our recent office progress, we simply hoped to send out a heartfelt thanks to everyone who left such sweet comments on yesterday’s announcement. To say that it has been fully surreal and that we are so grateful are two of the biggest understatements we could make. But back to the office.

You might remember on our initial planning post, we left off saying “We are still letting the concept simmer in our heads, but we are fairly confident that we will start heading in that last layout’s direction since it feels like it makes the most sense for the way we work.”

We still hoped to tape things off on the floor to truly get a feel for things, and after 700+ comments rolled in with ideas and suggestions, we had lively mulling over every last alternative. After a whole lot of thinking (and debating, and sketching, and standing in the room with tape lines all over the floor) we chose:

• an optimal layout would be some sort of floating double desk so we could both be in the middle of the room, instead of sitting right against the wall (we both would have window views, and would prefer to orient it so nobody has their back to the door)
• a meeting table in the office would make that the third room on our first level with a table in the middle of it, so although there was some initial embarrassment at the thought of holding meetings in our blue-trimmed dining room, we are planning to redo that shortly, so it makes sense to let it multitask. It honestly might get more use for meetings than formal dinners anyway – plus we will not have to worry if our office is a mess before meetings
• a craft/photography zone would still be most useful right in the office – and would most likely work best against the back wall of the room since the sunlight cannot stretch that far (that is where John has been sitting/working for the last nine months)

So with those three slow realizations (sometimes it takes us a while to get there…) we determined this layout might give us more function (and less wall-staring time) than the one we were initially leaning towards in our last office planning post.

We even dragged the comically small desk into the middle of the room simply to picture things a little better. We both Enjoyed being sort of cradled by the bay window, and sitting in the middle of the room, so it confirmed that we were at last on the right path. Psst- the plants are fiddle leaf figs from Home Depot (on sale for $59 with a 1 year warranty) so here is hoping I can keep them among the living…

Ever since we have been keeping an eye out for something to use as a double desk that could float in the room. We assumed we’d need to adapt it in some way to make it wider or longer to accommodate two people, but we knew a good solid piece would be simply the “bones” we’d need to begin, so we have been hitting up thrift stores, checking out craigslist and freecycle, and even the occasional yard sale (theeeeeey’re staaaaarting up again folks! hooray spring!). After at least eight failed missions/searches, this pleasant big, packed with storage, solid wood desk popped up on craigslist as a curb alert.

It was sheer luck that I saw it about twenty minuntes after it was initially posted (free curb alert items do not typically last long) and it was even better luck that it happened to be a Wednesday, because on a weekend I think it would have been gone in a minute. We dropped Clara off with John’s parents so we could fold down the seats to make room for something big, and raced over to the curb… hoping to see something on it.

Oh glad day, we made it! And it fit into the car by about two inches (if the legs were not removable it would have been too tall).

There might have been glad tears from this highly emotional pregnant lady. I also cry during commercials and the occasional youtube video about puppies.

Anyway, once at home we set it up on a dropcloth with four small pieces of wood under it to lift it up a few inches off the ground. The drawers were still out from our travels, and the other side was a cabinet with a faux-drawer front. There was even a pull-out thing on the right.

It was fairly beat up, so we were glad we were both sold on painting it white from the start.

We have been craving a clean/light/airy office from day one (we have dark walls in our bedroom, and more planned for the dining room across the hall from the office – but we consistently envisioned a light and bright work space). So although we ENJOY a good old piece of furniture that is unpainted, like our media cabinet, which we simply cleaned up and brought back to its original beauty with a combination of this method and this method; and Clara’s dresser, which we simply stained with a painted top; and this hand-me-down dresser from John’s dad that now lives in our closet…

… painting the desk a no-brainer thanks to the combination of more wear and tear along with our desire for a clean and light office.

We also took out all the hardware, drawers, and doors to prep it. That is when we saw this tag with the maker’s info. Does not “Administrator TM” sound official? I enjoyed squinting at the old drawer lock that said 1968 (it kinda looks like 1999 in in this picture, but up close it is certainly ’68). In fact in googling around for “Alma Administrator Desk 1968” I found one (albeit in a lot better shape) on eBay for $1000! Is that crazy or what?

How cool is this world we live in, where people leave things they no longer want on the curb and they simply might happen to be exactly what someone else is looking for.

I am sentimental these days, huh? It is simply a desk.

Anyway, next up was the “remove all the other random stuff” stage. This included using a straight razor to scrape off some paint blobs, weird raised areas of glue, and some old tape that had been stuck to the surface.

Then it was sanding time, so John donned a mask (sanding old wood can be particularly dusty) and used our hand sander to truly rough things up.

Once it had all been sanded down, we applied wood putty in a few spots, simply to fill in the divots and low points. We sanded those areas again when they were fully dry, and we were good to go.

Next I wiped it down with liquid deglosser, simply to remove any leftover sawdust or grease/build-up that might be lurking. Then John broke out the Kilz Premium primer and applied one thin and even coat with a small foam roller. It is what we used to paint our kitchen cabinets, which did not give us any issues with bleed.

One coat only took about an hour, and we did the back and fronts of the cabinet door, and the fronts of the drawers (so we left the interior of the cabinets and the drawers wood, which we did in our last office as well).

Before painting it, we chose it was likely smart to bring it into the house so we did not risk dinging up our paint job by moving it afterwards. We used the same dolly that came in handy for getting the fridge on the back porch a few weeks ago but this time John and I got ‘er done. The dolly did all the heavy lifting, so John pulled and I simply sort of steered it, opened various doors, and made sure we were not hitting anything or falling off the front pathway while we pulled it along.

Once inside, we set up the same drop cloth + four scrap pieces of wood system to slightly lift the desk off the floor and used the same BM Simply White Advance paint that we used for the upper cabinets in the kitchen (it is self leveling and specifically made for painting cabinetry or furniture). Once again we applied it with a small foam roller – using a small angled brush to get into some of the areas a roller would not reach, and then rolling over them as much as we could to blend everything together.

John did the first coat, and tagged me to do the second one the next day. If you can imagine, I looked even less graceful doing this part. Thankfully there is zero photographic evidence.

It simply took those two coats to get it covered, and the following day I applied some satin Safecoat Acrylacq to the desktop simply to seal everything and give it brought in protection – once again with a small foam roller (I did two thin coats).

We also chose to have some lively with the legs and the handles by painting the wood parts the same Simply White color as the desk itself, but once that dried we taped off the freshly painted parts (or disassembled the handles) so the old silver metal could get a subtle metallic-champagne color (I used Champagne Mist by Rustoleum).

It certainly has that light/airy office vibe going on now.

You can catch a glimpse of the legs in this photo.

Overall, we are truly glad with how it came out. Especially since it was a free secondhand find, which means we can put more money towards other things we want to do in here – like window treatments, an excellent overhead light, storage systems, pleasant new office chairs, etc.

So here is how the room is looking now:

With more of a handle on our layout, we are excited to move on to other steps, like painting the office (so far we have only done the trim) and working out how we are going to make a wall of organization (we are planning to use the wall behind this shot, since it is hidden from the foyer (that way the room will not look messy even if our command center gets chaotic).

As for adapting the desk to work for two people, we think it’ll be a fairly plain cut-a-hole-in-the-back-and-trim-it-out process, and we might add a wider top down the line (would not soapstone be cool?). But we did not want to rush into that simply in case over the next few weeks as this room comes together we change our mind and want a single desk for some reason (with another desk area somewhere else). So we are resisting the urge to rush into any decisions that we cannot undo, like cutting this baby open.

Update: Apparently using laptops for scale would have been helpful to show how two people can easily fit at this desk (it is 34″ wide and would be 38″ if we brought in some sort of counter with a 2″ overhang) so here is that pic for you folks! Our first house’s double desk was 18″ deep, and we each had ample rooms for legs and computers, so we think this plan should work well – but of course we will keep you posted!

What secondhand finds have you folks been hunting down lately? Have you ever in fact gotten in on a curb alert before someone beat you to it? This was our quite first time. Gotta say, I liked it. I liked it a lot.

PS: Wanna see another desk makeover? Check out the Hands-on herringbone pattern we painted on another thrift store desk.