Old Auction Desk Turned Into Boys Ultimate Star Wars Desk
by JD Powers
7 Materials
So my 10 yr old son loves Star Wars. He's a 80's -90's boy born in Y2k era. He's getting to the point where he really needs his a space where he can close his door and concentrate on his homework. He's distracted too easily and it doesn't help when he has a younger brother who doesn't have near as much homework and generally enjoys bugging his older brother when he's bored.
So my husband rescued this old desk at a local Auction. He got it for $90. I was pretty amazed at his find and said I believed we could do something with it. At that point, I just didn't know what!
So it sat in the Garage collecting even more spiders and dust and stacks of other stuff that doesn't need to be in a garage. Fast forward 6 months!
Ok, now I know what I want to do with it!
We started by sanding it down, realizing pretty quickly that it has a laminate ply on it. Oh and what a pain~ the laminate ply couldn't be the same wood on the drawer facing and the top of the desk, why not???? So we had 2 different types of wood laminate and I had already started the drawers with Minwax Espresso Stain. When I started staining the top of the desk it didn't look the same! OH NO!
Well, we'll just finish and make it work!
So my husband rescued this old desk at a local Auction. He got it for $90. I was pretty amazed at his find and said I believed we could do something with it. At that point, I just didn't know what!
So it sat in the Garage collecting even more spiders and dust and stacks of other stuff that doesn't need to be in a garage. Fast forward 6 months!
Ok, now I know what I want to do with it!
We started by sanding it down, realizing pretty quickly that it has a laminate ply on it. Oh and what a pain~ the laminate ply couldn't be the same wood on the drawer facing and the top of the desk, why not???? So we had 2 different types of wood laminate and I had already started the drawers with Minwax Espresso Stain. When I started staining the top of the desk it didn't look the same! OH NO!
Well, we'll just finish and make it work!
Here's the original desk!
Here's the top stained in Minwax Espresso. Oh and we removed the laminate ornate pieces from the front of the desk... it is a boys desk now it couldn't have all that girlie ornate stuff on it!
I used a chalk paint on the rest of the desk. ArtMinds Indigo Chalk Paint. Then I used DecoArt Deep Brown Crème Wax over the indigo to give it a little antique look with a soft shine. I really could have left this crème wax out completely and just sanded and applied a medium glaze, but I was really tired of sanding at this point!
Oh... Did you know... MODGE PODGE Glossy works great as a top coat! I had printed out all types of Star Wars Images and my son decided that he wanted his desk to represent the Force and the Dark Side. So he told me to make his drawers evenly represent the two sides. So, 3 drawers would have Good Guys and the opposite 3 drawers would have the Bad Guys. the hardware would be painted the same, light for the good and dark for the bad. I Modge Podged the Star Wars logo onto the top of the desk. When it dried the logo was a bit faint so I took my trusty Black Sharpie and went over the black areas of the logo and then modge podged over it again, that's when I noticed the nice shiny sheen I had and I covered the entire desk top in modge podge (watered down to make it stretch)
I did the same Modge Podge technique to the drawers and when it was all dry, I put it all together! Here's the desk in it's complete Star Wars glory!
The Dark Side! Hardware was spray painted with " hammered metal black".
The Force! Hardware was spray painted in "Metallic Silver".
This is it and my 10 yr old son couldn't be more happy. He's already started using it in his room that has been slowly coming together with Star Wars posters and bobble heads and other Star Wars Nick Knacks! That'll be for another post. Star Wars room makeover coming to a HomeTalk near you... Thanks for stopping in an scrolling a while!
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2 of 108 comments
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The original piece wasn’t a desk. It was a lady’s vanity/dresser. It would have had a mirror above so she could see to do her makeup and put on her jewelry. Nice makeover though!
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This is excellent!! Very creative and fun - great piece for boys.
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