Nothing like an easy little DIY  to kick off the New Year on the right foot (okay, Lulu). This one I did a while back but for the sake of freshly pressed blogging, let’s pretend it’s right out of the oven. We were handed down this beautiful 1940′s, desk handmade by Elliott’s grandfather for his Dad when he was growing up in Canada. We were so happy to help keep it in the fam and obviously to use and give it our ow personal touch. Here’s the before and after from the parents garage to beautifully sitting in our Chi-town pad:

I thought you you’d ask. Well, because it’s a vintage desk with sentimental value, we didn’t want to go crazy-painty on it. We might change our minds later, but for now, that’s what feels right: keep it old and simple, and for that matter, older and prettier.

First I distressed the edges by sanding it down real good. Please don’t look at my nails, would you? So embarrassing…

Not much of a change so far, huh? Hang in there, we’ll get to something soon.

Second, I removed each drawer, taped the corners I wanted to remain ivory and with a super large brush, painted the sides with latex paint.

I left it alone for a few hours (not many though, patience is not my thing) then spread Behr Premium Plus With Style Satin Faux Glaze around the tips and edges. Leave it on for few seconds and wipe off the excess with a damp cloth. This gives it even more of a vintage look with all the black corners and all. Soon after it was time for the drawers to receive the glaze (just on the front).

This is what the drawers look like once we put them back in place.

This is when I got lazy. It happens in every family, and I’m the master in mine. Ripped off newspaper placed over desk, “sealed” with glass on top, look at that!

We planned of switching the handles for something more fun and current like all of these from Anthropology but turned out his grandpa would not be very pleased (since he made it literally impossible with the tiny nails he originally used to hold his handles up) and we decided to leave it alone.

We’re clearly not all done in the “office department”. A nice chair would be, well… nice. And probably more comfortable than this temp chair we got. But as of now, this is what our vintage desk looks like: