A Little Crafty: Desk And Chair

After my dad built a loft for Maggie, I was on the lookout for a desk to go underneath it. She has a vanity and dresser that were mine (and my parent's before me) when I was younger. They are very nice, old pieces and she uses the vanity a lot. In fact, the vanity was doing double duty as a desk. Maggie is a bit of a packrat. (That sentence I just typed was the world's greatest understatement. For reals.) She is also, true to her impending teenager-hood, not the neatest person in the world. If that vanity could talk, it would be whimpering and beseeching me to find a desk to reduce its load. I had been on the lookout for an inexpensive, sturdy, wood desk for several months. At last, my BFF Goodwill came to my rescue.

I found this desk for $19 dollars. It was all wood and in excellent shape. At least until I got it home and there was a mishap with a drawer. But no worries! A little wood glue and paint and you can hardly see where Pat, I, we dropped it. Notice the lovely drawer pulls. They are no longer a part of the desk. A trip to Hobby Lobby and some silver metallic spray paint were the remedy to the ugly.

It sat in the basement for a few weeks but eventually I got around to sanding it and priming it and painting it. Then Maggie told me that she wanted polka dots on it. I was flummoxed. I knew that if I did girlie polka dots, that in a few years, she'd be tired of it and I'd be redoing that desk again. So I had to come up with something that would have the required circles but still allow us to keep the desk the same for more than a couple of years.

I decided to do some random circles in different sizes in the colors of her room--green, blue, and purple. Although they don't look purple in the pictures, the smallest circles really are. In the pictures, they've taken on more of a blue cast, while the blue circles look more blue and less silvery-blue than they really are. That's what happens when you take pictures at night and you are in a hurry. Oh well.

The chair is this one that I found ages ago. I sanded, primed, and painted it as well, and then added some paint and embellishment with a silver paint pen. Again, it looks not quite right in the pictures because of the glare from the camera flash, but I think it turned out well.

Maggie was very pleased with the results. She declared the chair "beast" and the desk "awesome." Her friend told me I was "hardcore" in my abilities. (I think that's good, but I am ancient and don't speak the language.) Apparently I can rock my mad art skillz, yo.

She spent the evening that we moved it into her room organizing her desk. Everything is neat and tidy. Shocker! I may have to go take a picture of that, because as we used to say when I was in 4th grade and somebody was staring: "Take a picture! It lasts longer!"