Trash To Treasure | Desk Makeover

hello and welcome back to desert DIY if you are new here my name is Cory today I have a stunning transformation for you I'm going to take this beat-up old desk and make it absolutely beautiful again you will not believe how it looks at the end you and I was surprised by it I still keep looking at it thinking wow really is this the same desk but I picked it up from a friend who got it from somebody else and they didn't have time to fix it up so she gave it to me and the first thing I'm going to do is sand the top down there is a huge beautiful surprise underneath this old beat-up finish it has a like braided wood inlay and the wood inlay is a special type of wood and I actually had to look it up because I've never seen a wood that was bright red naturally without any kind of stain it was just naturally bright red there you can see what I mean so when I looked it up on Google it was called red heart I believe and I think it comes from South America although you don't quote me on that the next thing I'm going to do is take the drawers out and get all of the Hardware off just like the rest of the desk the hardware was really dirty and just needed to be cleaned up so I took all the hardware off and it was the kind of hardware that comes apart into three pieces so I had to be very careful not to lose any of the pieces or the screws also during this time you can kind of figure out when a piece was made by what type of hardware they use inside the drawers and id8 this piece around the late 1950s to early 1960s because of the flathead screws that it used on the inside they were very mass-produced looking so it's not an antique that's for sure now I'm just going to use some wood filler and fill in all of the cracks that happen from this piece drying out over time in our dry desert climate the wood filler I'm using is a Minwax stainable wood filler it's important to get a stainable wood filler for wood that you know you're going to be restaining and for the top of this piece I filled in a couple little small small spots so I wanted to make sure that I was stainable and was going to look like wood grain and this part is the most tedious part of the whole project it took me about an hour to hand sand the whole edging of the top of this desk once that is done I go inside and sand off the wood filler that I used on the desk drawers so the drawers had some spots that were very severely blemished and I need to fill them in and then I cleaned all of the drawers after that now I am going to use black that's right black paint to paint the whole bottom of the desk I'm starting with the drawers because I want to get it definitely some good coats on the drawers so for the dry time I like to start on the piece that I know is going to take the most amount of coats but since this had so many defects from age on there I wanted to make sure I got some really good coats of paint on these fronts of these drawers the paint that I used was just a wrist Oleum paint that you can buy ready and made at the can from any store that sells paint that is rust-oleum brand or you can use any other brand I don't recommend getting store brands like the Walmart brand or the Ace Hardware brand just because those paints are not as good now I'm going to be painting the rest of the body of the desk and you can see the top of the desk how good it came out from sanding it and it was definitely worth that sweat equity that I put into hand sanding that edge it with the edge was really delicate because of how dried out it was and because of the type of veneer that was on there I got the whole bottom of the piece done and I'm going to put the drawers back in and then hit them up with a second coat of that black the body of the desk did not end up meeting a second coat which was good it was in pretty good condition and so once I got all the drawers in I just hit that second coat on there and then my favorite part of the whole project is putting the wax on the top of the desk so when you do this you can see that the color of the wood pops and I knew that was going to happen I was really excited to find out what kind of color was going to come through and red wood oh my gosh I can't believe how vibrantly red that is who knew that I was hiding under that destroy to finish on the top of this desk it really blew me away I believe the rest of the wood is the mahogany wood and maybe a little bit of walnut in there around the edge but it is gorgeous like I seriously don't even have words for the amount of craftsmanship that went into making that now I'm just gonna buff the wax finish and get off the excess I did two coats of wax on here because I really wanted it to be nice and durable but I didn't want to do poly on here because I wanted to keep that really good wood feel and for all the handles and hardware I just took a wire brush and cleaned the hardware in soap and water you can kind of see how nasty dirty the water is and that's just from soap so it was they were pretty disgustingly dirty which is to be expected because you see the way it looks in the beginning that's what makes this a true trash to treasure because it is something that somebody could think should go to the dump although somebody like me would be like oh no way now I'm going to use a brass and all this this metal polish is just for all metal but this in particular is brass and I just shined up all of the brass really quickly with a rag and that wire brush and then I'm going to go back now that this wood this black paint here is all finished drying and hit it up with the wax as well because I used a flat black finish I needed to seal it with a wax and I want it to all have the same kind of matte finish that the wax gave the wood on the top so that it all was cohesive and went together in the end and putting on three-piece hardware is a little bit tricky you put in one side then put the handle in then put on the other side and then screw them both in it's a little bit hard to hold it all together while you're doing it so you can see me kind of struggle a little bit here's the finished product my friends it turned out stunning I absolutely love this and it is definitely a change from what I normally do with my whitewash but there was no way I was and I put whitewash on this piece I chose black because of the fact that it was in such rough shape and black could hide all those blemishes and make the beautiful wood top stand out thank you so much for watching and if you like what you saw today don't forget to hit the thumbs up and subscribe down below and I will see you next time bye

Channel: Desert DIY

Views: 234,147

Rating: 4.9111032 out of 5

Keywords: trash to treasure, old furniture, desk makeover, black paint, chalk paint, wax finish, brass

Id: Voz8lXiJxEk

Length: 7min 2sec (422 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 17 2020