Craigslist FREE Desk

Dunham Design Company
by Dunham Design Company
1 Material
4 Days
Easy
Don't you just love those free ads on Craigslist? This guy was listed as in the back alley. Take it, it's free. So while out and about I talked the hubs into stopping to see if it was still there. I thought no way. The ad was posted the day before and we just had a pretty significant rain storm. We stopped anyway and there it was.. Yahoo! I said and the hubs said no way. This thing has tetnus written all over it... I gave him a frown face. We loaded it up and off we went.. He said your lucky I love you, but sometime you just see firewood...
This is not fire wood. It has the most beautiful curves and detail. Granted it has seen better days.
The rain and neglect has made the veneer lift.
Pretty bad shape. This is gonna be beautiful I told him you just wait.
So I started peeling and sanding off the veneer. This is crazy, 2 layers of veneer, maybe he was right. I'm not ready to admit it yet. I tried sanding, scraping, grinding and a razor blade. This stuff won't give up. So I checked out youtube. I found a video where the women saturated a towel with water and draped it over the peice to assist in removing the veneer. It popped right off after she let it sit over night. So of course I kept checking mine about every hour and after 4 hours the veneer lifted. It was so easy.
I decided I was going to try staining the top and the drawer fronts with a mixture of white vinegar and steel wool . This is what I use to age wood. I turned a peice of red oak purple. Nope. Not what I want, but I sat the container on top of the desk and it left a ring so this is the way we're going this time.
The top is white oak. So although it has a bit of a purple hue its not as drastic as the red oak.
I painted the body gauntlet gray by Sherwin Williams
Here's the finished product. What started as an accident turned out great. I used some antique ceramics knobs as the pulls.
The hubs doesn't think it's a tetnus ridden fire wood pile of junk anymore
The inside of the drawers were beat up as well. I found a fail safe trick awhile ago. Mix 1 part white vinegar to 1 part olive oil and wipe it on. As it drys the scratches disappear
This is after 5 minutes. Beautiful!
Suggested materials:
  • Junky old desk   (Craigslist FREE)
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