Garage Sale Conquest

Although I had made a resolution not to buy anything for the new room until we have a new room, I recently made 2 garage sale purchases with the room in mind.  Both because I decided they were deals too good to pass up on things we were going to need anyway.  One was a large mirror with a decorative frame - it is usable as is and is easy to store (being flat).  The other was a small desk.  It is going to be a bigger room than the other one, but not too big, so I've been keeping an eye out for a small desk and this one caught my eye when Caleb and I were hitting some garage sales in early October:

The seller wanted $20 and I wanted to pay $5, but I ended up paying $10.  The following experience will make me a more aggressive bargainer!  To a great extent, I payed for an education this time!

What I liked about this desk mostly was its size and I also liked the classic look.

The back board had a decorative onlay that I hoped to be able to keep.

My biggest bargaining point with the seller was that I was clearly going to have to strip and repaint the desk.  She breezily said "piece of cake!".  I was not convinced it would be that easy - and I was right!

The kids helped some, although I did not want them dealing much with the chemical stripping agent.  What I learned here is that to use a chemical stripper, you should use a nice thick layer.  The desk turned out to have a thick, rather messy white layer and a neater, thinner pale blue layer.  Underneath, the wood was raw.

After using the stripping agent, there was still a lot of sanding and detail work.  Annalise and I worked hard to remove all the paint from the onlay.  This turned out to be educational work too because, in the end, it broke and I threw it away.  But we did remove almost all the paint - so that proves it can be done if it needs to.

After removing all the paint, it was obvious that the top had water damage and had to be replaced, so off that came and I decided I would paint the body of the desk and stain the top.

This is just primer.

We replaced the top with a piece of plywood, the kids helped sand it and round out the corners.  Rounding the corners was a breeze.  At least something was a piece of cake!

Since it will be the girls' desk, I let them pick the paint - Annalise wanted green and Natalie wanted lavender, they compromised with a blue color (not far off the original color!).  Inspired by an online tutorial, I decided to stain a lotus flower onto the top.

Voila!

In the end I decided the flower would make the backboard add too much extra busyness to the design and since the desk will be against a wall, it isn't necessary.  I really like the flower and it was very easy to make - honestly!  A piece of cake!