School Desk Turns Retro

A few weeks back, I stopped at a garage sale just out of town and found this...

An old school desk that had definitely seen better days and had plenty of rusty spots.

Apparently Levi used her for a while.

I thought $5 was a good price and happily handed over the money and brought her home.

The poor girl (not sure why she's a girl, but she is...just so you know) sat outside in the wind, rain and hail for longer than I care to admit, but I needed time to come up with something just right for her.

I thought about a nice dovey grey with black trim because I knew that would blend nicely with the color scheme we've chosen for our house. That is, until I remembered this cake...

Normally I wouldn't put cakes and school desks together in the same train of thought, but I really loved the turquoise and red color combination, not to mention the cute little cherries!

So...after lots of thought, a bit of dreaming, and some elbow grease and paint supplies...little Levi's desk has blossomed into this...

I love it so much, I wish I could sit in it!!

Blogging would be so fun in that!

Even paying bills would be fun in that!

Okay, maybe that's pushing it a little too far.

Here are some pics of the transformation...

What??! You don't paint on top of your fire pit?!

Apparently hubby wasn't too impressed with the leftover spray paint on the lawn (aka clover/dandelion patch) from my other projects, so he set up some 2x4's and asked if I could kindly spray paint there instead. (We're not planning on keeping the pit.)

So first I took all the wood pieces off, sanded everything down, then gave it all a good coat of spray primer.

At first I had planned to use leftover Ben Moore Turquoise Haze, but Krylon's Blue Ocean Breeze spray paint was just too handy and such a beautiful color...so after the primer dried, I applied two coats of paint.

I'm really loving this yummy color!

Our little missy is starting to recognize her letters and numbers now, so I thought it would be fun to turn the desk top into a chalkboard with painted numbers and letters around the edges.

I used brush-on chalkboard paint for this, but learned the hard way that I should have used a sponge brush for the applications rather than a regular brush! Duh!

As a result, there's a little more "texture" to this chalkboard than I'd like.

I bought a couple sheet of number and letter stickers from the dollar store and laid them out in a pattern I liked on the desk top...

...then traced around everything with a pencil...

I used a paint pen to fill in the letters and numbers. I'd never used one before and now I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with them. I love them when they work properly, but hate them when the paint decides to blob out where it isn't supposed to! Ooops! That's when touch up paint comes in really handy. 

I do, however, really like the shiny finish the paint pen gives.

I wanted to paint cherries on the desk, but I didn't really trust my own drawing skills so I snooped around the dollar store to see what I could find that might be traceable. Nothing, nada.

I tried the scrapbooking store next, but they didn't have much either. After describing what I wanted, the salesgirl came up with this cutout using the Cricut. Just perfect!

I traced around it and filled in the cherries, stems and leaves with acrylic craft paint.

Don't look too closely though...I am not an artist!!

Eeeee! I love it!

The kiddies were really chomping at the bit to try it out for size and break in that chalkboard!

Love those grubby little hand prints!

It's been years since I've refinished furniture, but I have to say this was pretty fun for easing back into it! Until the next project though...we're gonna spend lots of time learning those numbers and letters and drawing circles and hearts and anything else we can think of!

By the way, I'm dedicating this post to my sis-in-law, who's been a Kindergarten teacher for the past several years. This is just my humble opinion - but I think anyone who chooses to teach a class of hyper 5 yr. olds  deserves to be knighted by the Queen!

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