During my Black Friday online shopping spree this year, I splurged and bought myself a 27″ monitor for my home office, forgetting of course, that my desk had a hutch with an opening for a 20″ monitor. Oops! The monitor cost more than the desk, and I was thinking about making a change to this room anyway, so the oversize monitor gave me a good excuse to start desk shopping at Restore and on Craig’s list.
I found a super heavy solid wood desk on Craigslist for $60 and talked the guy into letting me take it for $50. He told me that it had belonged to a doctor who had it in his office since at least the 1970’s, possibly longer. When I opened the drawers, there were notes on pharmaceutical post-its in what looked like an older woman’s script labeling each drawer location. So cute!
The desk was fairly scratched and had several chips. It also had drawer pulls and I knew I wanted to use knobs instead, so I used some wood filler and wood glue to repair the broken parts. Then, after sanding, priming, painting, and polying, I wanted to give it a little bling, so I added some knobs from Homegoods, but still it wasn’t quite what I envisioned for the office.
I had some silver circle wallpaper from Lowes laying around that I bought because I loved it, even though I knew I would never put it on my walls (too much work). I thought the metallic silver in the wallpaper it might look good with the drawer knobs. I made a template out of cardboard and cut a pattern out of the wallpaper. I gave the pieces a quick coat of spray on polycrylic for protection and attached them to the drawers with dots. I then drilled the holes for the knobs though the center of the wallpaper pattern. It looks great next to the silver cabinet I painted a few weeks ago that has become a printer stand and paper holder. I used the same knobs on both the desk and the cabinet to help tie them together visually.
Cost to refinish:
- $40 paint, poly, wood glue & wood filler
- $26 knobs
- $32 wallpaper
- Total = $98
