Vintage School Desk Makeover

by Paula Skulina

3 Materials

Good friends are moving into a new house and asked if I would give their daughter’s desk a makeover for her new room. This desk is an old school desk but I don’t know its history. It’s size makes me think that it originally was used in a junior or high school.

vintage school desk makeover, painted furniture

Our friends' daughter likes art and you can see that she’s spent quite a bit of time at this desk over the years painting . She also likes stickers and applied them all over. That residue can be pesky to remove!

I loved the natural wood top of this desk and wanted to preserve the pretty wood. It took quite a bit of sanding to get the top ready to stain. After I sanded the top to bare wood, I decided to also sand the legs to bare wood so that I wouldn’t have to worry about the dark stain color on the legs bleeding through the grey paint that I planned to use.

TThe top of the desk got two coats o Minwax Polyshades in Antique Walnut followed by two coats of Minwax Polycrylic in Semi-Gloss for extra durability. The legs were painted with Grey Silk paint from The Plaster Paint Company followed by wax from the same company. The chair is from a different desk and is painted in a slightly darker shade of grey.