The big desk refinishing project Day One

Remember earlier in the month when I went off kilter about a used desk I bought for twenty five bucks? I started the refurb job on it today. Problem one the desk is huge. We couldn't get it home. We had to rent a U-Haul so while we had the U-Haul we picked up a new sofa...because our sofa, oh my god, it was in sad sad shape. I got a good nice new sofa and an old beat up desk. I don't know how to upholster. I have no wish to learn. Sanding and painting I'm good with.

So one week after I bought the desk it finally came home. And Problem two. It will only go through the front door. It's too big for the inside doors. We're still debating how to move the thing into the designated office area. (our bedroom in the far corner) (one day I'll have a house with an extra room just for an office) (or kids will move out and I can claim one of their rooms)... And that brings us to Problem Three. Once I started sanding problems began to appear below the varnish. This is to be expected with old furniture. You don't know how many times it's been "patched". I also discovered that the very top of the desk and the side panels aren't solid wood, but wood veneer. As in very thin sheets of real wood glued onto cheaper wood. The legs and frame are good sturdy wood. So it's not a problem.

I just had to take the top of the desk down to the bare wood to deal with all the bubbles that were hiding under the old varnish. And to smooth the gauges and carvings I found under the top layer of varnish. The lower left front corner has extensive water damage to the veneer. I filled in the spots that I saw before sanding with wood putty but as I sanded more damage showed. So I ended up cutting out the veneer in that area and filling the whole section with wood putty.

With the kids stepping in to get to places I couldn't and the son taking over the power sander from me every now and then and the son and husband doing the heavy lifting. The husband was power washing the house or I'd have drafted him to sand but this is my project and really I don't like him messing with stuff like this he's basically Tim the Tool Man when it comes to projects. He doesn't like to take time to get everything the first time. And believe me if you leave bubbling flaking old varnish your finished project won't last long. So in the places where the varnish was bad we took it as close to bare as possible. In places where the varnish was good we just roughed it up really good so that the primer will stick.

We patched holes and spots and took everything apart. Puttied and shop vacced. And I am about to drop.

So pics starting with the before. I forgot to take pics before I took the cabinet door off so forgive the not complete before.

 So here it is. I know it doesn't look like much, the cabinet is off and the middle drawer is out but you can see how dark it is and the light patches on the corner are where I patched holes two days ago. For the most part those patches held.

 There is a great sliding shelf in the cabinet, on this really complicated sliding system with springs and weird things. It works. I'm not taking it apart to remove the shelf to paint it because there is no way I'll get it back on right.

 Three drawers and a pull out board. The bottom drawer doesn't have the wood drawer pull. So I'm going to take one of the three off the cabinet. It doesn't need three and the drawer needs a pull.

 the middle drawer has this great accessories slot thing for stuff. I like things for stuff.

 cabinet door

 back of cabinet door. People when you put glue under hinges to hold the hinges on you ruin your furniture. We sanded the glue off and filled the holes with putty so that the husband can drill new hinges on.

 the back along with the back of my house and a cat and no it's not normally that messy the kids were doing the front lawn mowing and things were in the utility room and look at the kitty isn't she cute.

The side and look how nice the grass is.

And now for the "after" photos. Not the real after photos, those are still several days away. The new section of putty has to dry and then I have to sand that area down again and hope it fixed the problem. And then all of the dust needs to be cleaned off before I apply the first coat of primer.  I'm hoping that it only needs one coat because that's about all the primer I have without a run down to Lowe's. And then the primer has to dry before I add the top coat. I chose teal and white. I was going to do the base in teal and the top in white but changed my mind. You'll have to wait to see what colors I paint what. Hopefully by Friday.  So step one sanding and patching pics follow.

 This side the varnish was rotten or something it just flaked off and it smelled funny. I took it down to the stain instead of just scuffing it up some places were thick with flaking varnish. Really it was eww.

 Uh, yeah that's me and my chunky self. I'm covered in dust and feeling yucky pay no attention.

 I stripped most of the veneer off here. I'm hoping this wood putty dries nicely and fills in the gaps. Otherwise it's ruined.

 It took about two hours to do the top. There was so much varnish with so much damage that we took it to the bare wood not just to the stain.

 And after a week of gorgeous weather we have storms rolling in and this monster is on the back porch. Gotta find a tarp somewhere. Hope I can get back to work tomorrow. We'll talk to the weather man.

Sorry for no hot guys. I thought I'd shake it up a bit.

Mercy