DIY desk renovation

For the few of you (sad) who were puzzled about my last post. It's all good now, I took a chill pill and I feel great, in fact I have had a pretty darn nice couple of days since then. So as promised, my first DIY project.

Supplies for this project include: a desk, paint, knobs, glue and pretty paper.

We purchased this beauty from the Salvation Army in Tempe:

$50 bucks, and overpriced trust me (oh, and they were asking for $85). Perhaps they charged me for all those dead bugs I found inside and I'm not joking. The first step to renovation is cleaning the piece, this when I found spider webs and dead flies encrusted on the insides.

The next step to renovation is going to the hardware store and buying the supplies you will need. I needed new hardware (knobs) and paint. I went for white satin spray paint. I went for spray paint because I wanted to avoid having brush streaks all over my desk, I wanted it to look evenly painted, which it does, but I also learned that spray painting is wasteful and inefficient and dirty. Lots of those paint particles that don't end up on the piece will end up on yourself or on the surfaces around the spraying area. I think next time I will simply invest into a good brush/sponge and use the good ol' bucket of paint.

I had to do 3 coats of paint (about 2.5 cans, good news is spray paint dries fast!) to convert this desk from black to white. I chose white "satin" because it was the in-between medium between glossy and matte.

I let the desk dry for 24 hours before I did anything else to it, and I also sprayed the inside of the drawer with a single thin coat because I wanted a white surface for the next step.

Not too far from the hardware store, there is also an arts and crafts store. I found the most *beautiful* hand made Japanese paper there. The sad part is that it costs $24 per sheet :((( so Instead I went for a pretty floral pattern for $8 per sheet.

I measured my desk drawer and cut the paper to size. I also cut off the corners because sometimes you have to cut corners when the paper doesn't fit into them...

Apply regular white craft glue generously... not. I learned from this that when it comes to glue, less is more. If the paper gets soaked in glue then it will develop little wrinkles and even stains (happened to a different project). So just apply a little bit of glue and spread it around with a brush or bundle of paper.  Spread it all the way to the edges, and if more is needed then apply a little bit more. I worked with halves of my surface instead of all of it at once.

Let dry. Install hardware and voila!

I have pretty new desk and I really, really like how it turned out. I bought that little stool for it and I want to make a little cushion so it is more comfortable to sit. I have no plans on how I will do that yet.