Polar Vortex and Cabin Fever!

Ok, so it has been the coldest day of my life! Today I believe the low was -15 degrees with a windchill of -36 degrees!! I know people whose eyelashes were frozen within 10 minutes of being outside and they said that if you were without gloves, you could get frostbite in 5 minutes. That is way too cold for me. Luckily we had two snow days in a row so I have been able to refurbish while I was sitting around getting cabin fever.

In my first blog post I talked about a little pink desk from GoodWill Glam (remember it?). Well I am going to talk about how I created my own replica of the desk. First off, I had to find my own desk. I went to a Goodwill near my work and found one for $40. When I first saw the price of the desk, I thought $40 was a bit steep for the type of desk it was. After speaking to the cashier, she said if I could take it home that day I could buy it for only $20. The trip home was interesting because I had my sister's Ford Taurus. It has somewhat small trunk space for an entire desk. So my sister drove on the highway while I laid halfway in the back seat and in the trunk holding onto the desk.
**Disclaimer: I do not recommend this at all**

Ok first steps first, sanding the desk. Make sure it is nice and smooth. After sanding it, brush all of the shavings off. You can either use a brush or what is called a tact cloth. A tact cloth is a somewhat sticky cloth that picks up excess gunk on whatever you are using it on. You can find it at your local hardware store in the paint section.  After sanding it down you can then prime it.  As you can see in the pictures, when I primed it I used light layers, just enough to cover the surface.

After priming you can start painting! Now i wanted a design on mine where the design was white and the desk was pink. I painted the top of the desk white first and then planned my design. Make sure when planning your design you "measure twice and cut once". I had to keep rechecking the design and remeasuring. I even had my dad come look at it to see what he thought about it. Sure enough I had made a few mistakes in the measurements but I finally got it down.

After finishing the design I painted the pink paint over it. If I had to do it again I would use a brush and not a rolling sponge. I would also be very careful around the tape. They say paint tape is not supposed to leak the paint through but it does happen and it happened to me. I still haven't gone back and touched it up. So when painting over your design be very light and make sure you paint brush is not loaded up with paint.                                    After painting the top, I then painted the drawers and everything else. Another thing that I did to spruce up the desk was spray paint the existing knobs gold. I thought about buying new knobs for it but the old ones had cute detail and I figured I could cut the cost of buying new ones. Here is my finished project. Do not mind the bottom drawers, my dad is making them into one big drawer and it is not finished yet.