Trash Turned Treasure–My New Desk

My new house has an “office.” Which basically means that it has an extra bedroom without a closet. TECHNICALLY it’s not a bedroom without a closet, so you have to call it an “office” and charge less money when you sell it because it’s not a fourth bedroom. Those silly technicalities will get you.

I digress…..

Anyway, that being said, I called dibs on the room we now call “the office” (like I’m a professional or something…hilarious, I know). It was already painted yellow (my fav!) and had a super cool ceiling medallion (fancy! You’re welcome if you now have Iggy’s song stuck in your head 🙂 ). It even had some cabinets and shelves already built in to store all my “professional” things–like jars and kiddie paint brushes and picture frames I have had for a year and haven’t put actual pictures in yet. Yes, I’m sure that’s what people with “real” offices put on their shelves, right?

Anyways, here’s a picture so you get the idea:

I said all that to say (I know you were wondering where I was going with all this), my new office needed a desk so I could do grown up things like balance the checkbook, pay bills, and gather all our tax information using my laptop. (Growing up is SOOOOOO much fun…..)

I had intentions of making this desk out of some scrap wood I got from work, but hadn’t completely decided on what kind of legs I wanted to use or make. So I kept putting it off and blaming my indecisiveness for the procrastination.

Then one day my grandpa called me and asked if I wanted his old Singer sewing machine table base. It had been sitting in his shed for years and he thought I could put it to good use. Why, yes, yes I can put that to good use 🙂

She was a little dirty and really rusty. So I sanded her down and cleaned her up and spray painted her a glossy black. (Funny story–I had an old can of black spray paint to start off with and it was terrible. The can went crazy and splattered paint all over the place. Anything within ten feet of it in my shop had paint splatters. Of course I just wanted to see it done and painted, so I just kept spraying. Then I realized I had just spray “splattered” all of our tools haha oops.)

Of course, I didn’t take any pictures of anything throughout this entire project. I forget every time!

I debated on what to use for the table top and decided to use some 2x4s I had on hand. I nailed them together and screwed them onto the top of the frame. I wanted to stain them, but it had been in the twenties outside the whole week and didn’t want to stain when it was so cold. So I talked Danny into helping me bring it inside to stain.

Oh, you didn’t know? Only cool people stain with headbands on their ears inside the house and listen to (sing along with) pandora on their phone…while simultaneously cooking supper and having to pause to go make sure it’s not burning. All while NOT wearing gloves (which is a very bad idea). Yep, that’s me. Super cool…

I honestly can’t tell you what I did to make it come out like this, but here was the final product:

I used a combination of grey and brown stain along with random brushes of black and cream paint, sandpaper and a rag. No rhyme or reason and no particular order. Except grey stain was first. I know that only because Danny took a picture of it haha.

I had originally planned on making the whole desk myself out of wood. But I’m so glad I could use a gift from my pa instead to make it mean so much more to me. His trash, my treasure 🙂 I love it!

What do you think? I’d love your feedback! Leave a comment or send me a message. Keep your eyes peeled for kitchen remodel updates to begin soon!

Don’t forget to pin for later!