My Revamped Desk and Chair

It's been a while since I've shared some projects, so I decided to dip into my "moving in" archives and pull up some of the stuff I did when we first got to Wisconsin.

We'll start with our desk that weighs 700 pounds.  Take the drawers out and it might be 650.  Anything so solid just cannot be abandoned in a move.  And isn't that the maddening part of moving?  When you show up to help someone move in or out, you should go ahead and prepare your heart that all the pre-fab IKEA shelves have been tossed, but the family hand-carved piano organ will need your attention.  Along with the 400-pound leather couch that your neighbors have had for years that you put on top of your Passat wagon and then hoist to the upstairs loft using come-alongs made out of webbing.

But hey, it worked out, didn't it?  Nick...do you read my blog?

This 700-pound desk cost us $5 at a yard sale.

I stained it.  It took eleven days to dry.

This is exactly how this project went down (and I know because I just found the email thanks to Gmail's insane search engine):  I emailed my sis a picture of this desk and said WHAT TO DO.  She wrote back "My first reaction to the desk is to leave the wood dark and paint the drawers grass green with a white bird sitting on a branch on one of the drawers."

I don't really come up with anything.  I just poke around in creative places and then imitate.

My first green was wrong.  It was anemic and minty and I hated it. 

 

 
These 2 photos were my bird-on-branch inspiration.  Thanks, internet.

I got the color of the drawers right the second time around with a rich, seventies kind of green.  Also, I wanted my bird a little fatter.

To find a chair like this, poke around in a rich neighborhood with bricked streets on trash day.

At first, I was sorta almost kinda tempted to sand this guy and stain him and leave him wood.  Then I looked again at that tedious scrolling harp.  And I thought again of my infatuation with Ben Moore's Venetian Gold.

I love you, Venetian Gold.

 

It's really not a sunshine yellow, contrary to the wet-paint kind of flash my camera gives off.  It's more old.  Like this:

The End!

Before-ish:

After: