Roll Top Desk Makeover

Since we are currently renting our house, we can't do any major renovations for awhile. I see this as a good thing because it forces us to live in the house as it is and really see what we want to change before we change it. Also, with unpacking and everything (photos to come soon) it doesn't leave much time for renovating. Never the less, the renovation bug is itching to get out and so we've decided to do some make overs on furniture. We've been meaning to work on these pieces for awhile, and these are perfect projects to calm down our need to do work on the house.

Our first project is a roll top desk that my mom and I snagged on the side of the road in Maine a few years ago for free (don't worry the owner's were getting rid of it). It's a great size, but definitely needed work, but time hasn't lent itself to fixing it up until now. It is a combo of real wood and laminate so it is really heavy and it is great for holding mailing supplies.

Before: Desk with roll top up and drawer out

We considered sanding it down and refinishing it until we realized parts of it were not real wood. Because of this, I decided to paint it. I don't really like to paint furniture (usually we opt for refinishing) and I really wanted the paint to stick and stay on the desk. To make sure the stain didn't bleed through and the colored paint stuck, we started by priming the entire desk.

Progress: All the scratches have disappeared!

To give the desk a little more character, I decided to paint it two slightly different colors. Below you can see the swatches.

The main color is Valspar Thorny Bush and the accent is Valspar Roaming Pony. The accent is a slightly purplish version of Thorny Bush. I decided to do the drawer front, the roll top part and the inside of the desk the accent color and the main part of the desk Thorny Bush. We also switched out the hardware to something a little more fun than what it came with.

Now the above pictures show the desk painted in water based, flat paint. A trick the paint lady at Lowes taught us is that if you want a shiny hard finish and you don't want to use oil paint, you can use flat paint and then polyurethane over the paint with a water based polycrylic. We used Minwax clear gloss polycrylic to protect the paint and it gave it a great shiny look!

I was a little nervous about painting the desk, especially because of the roll top part but i really like how it came out and I think it's a huge improvement !