Blue Desk, a little boho a little industrial

I wish I had taken a photo of the desk before. What a disaster this desk was! It had so many layers of latex paint on it and it was all peeling and chipping. It was such a mess that I left this sitting in the garage for months because I just did not want to work on it! Finally, I decided I better tackle it. It needed stripping so I used a paint stripper on it and had to do that twice. Then it still needed sanding so I started with an 80 grit sandpaper, then a 100. Mostly I was able to use my electric sander but there were sections where I had to sand my hand. All the drawers had expanded since it was sitting in the humidity for so long so they actually needed to be planed. As you can see, a ton of work! I finally had it ready for cleaning and priming. The top of the desk I sanded down as much as possible but it had really strange sections of areas that just would not sand smooth. Almost as if there were gouges or burn areas. It was very strange. I wasn't quite sure what to do and finally I decided to just leave it and stain it so see what it would look like. I stained it with General Finishes java gel stain. I only used one coat of stain. I actually liked it! It kinda looked industrial with all the markings on the top that darkened with the stain. On top of the stain I did a wash with dark blue chalk paint. Just slightly. That brought up the blue that was on the bottom portion of the desk.

The rest of the desk was painted in Napoleonic blue. I decided to give the drawer fronts a unique look with paper so I used modge podge to apply the paper. Once this was all done, I waxed it all with black wax. I even put some black wax on the papered areas too so that they would look aged.

I was happy with the results and this desk sold quite fast!