Trash to Treasure... Literally.

As I have stated in a previous post, we lost my great grandma Channels in December of last year.. 2 days before Christmas. As a result, I inherited her sewing machine. My grandma spent many hours sewing and quilting, and taught me to sew on that machine. We even made a small quilt together- one that I will treasure forever. I was always intrigued by all the pretty patterns of all her quilting squares, so it goes without saying that I was beyond thrilled when she decided to help me make that little blanket. I'm sure it was with some resistance- one of those situations where kids get really annoying so you do something to keep them busy awhile- but I would have never known it. She was always the sweetest, & she always will be.

So you can imagine my delight when I brought home my brand new 25 year old pristine sewing machine. Seriously, pristine. Warranty & receipt still in the manual.. which I'm SO thankful for because I turn to that thing regularly. However, I was sad because I had no place to put my new toy. But alas! (I'm not sure where that "alas" came from)- it's moving season here at Heritage Apartments! While taking out the trash, hesitantly, my lovely fiance discovered a solid wood desk sitting beside the dumpster, and it was in acceptable shape! Woo! SCORE. Trash is pretty great sometimes. I proudly carried that thing inside... just kidding, I made Frankie carry it, but I held the door & immediately got to work!

Now, this thing had been painted a good 3 times. First with latex paint, then latex paint, then oil-based. What a mess! The paint was peeling, uneven, and to be honest, a really ugly color.

  See, cute, but ugly all the same. That little pile of stuff on top is the oil-based paint that was peeling off. I thought this would be an easy task- just scrape off the top paint & repaint. But nope, of course not.

P.S. That's Missy.. My first fur-baby. Me & my childhood best friend found her in a tree.

 

So I started by popping off the hardware that I knew I had to completely replace & began scraping. As you can see here- The second layer of paint was white. I couldn't get all the top paint off, so I next went with Paint Stripper.

Post stripping... OH MY GOSH what was I thinking. I decided to strip this on the hottest & most humid day of the year. I was thoroughly convinced I would die before this thing was finished. But as you can see, there was some blue paint under there too!

The desk-top post-sanding. As you can see, I didn't even come close to getting all the paint off, but that would have destroyed the wood. Some 80 grit sandpaper & a lot of motivation got this thing sanded down good enough for me.

As you can see.. Sydney, my second fur-baby, is slightly disapproving. She says, "Mom, these drawers are sanded nice & smooth, but they are so ugly. Please fix ASAP."

Okay Syd, I hear ya.

  

I really hope this is better, Sydney.

I went to Lowe's & went straight in to the mistint paint cart, because let's be honest, I'm a poor college kid. & I'm also cheap- hence the garbage desk. I found a gallon of Paint/Primer in a "Ice" color. You can't really tell the color here, but you can on the finished product. It's an eye-catcher! But I understand the return.. Definitely not a wall color I'd want.



Ahh, much better. Perfect? Heavens no! But this was my first project that I did ALL by myself. I even purchased all the necessary stuff from the hardware store all by myself. (Okay, I asked Frankie 40 questions first, but that still counts). Woo again! She's almost done!

But alas! (I'll stop "Alas-ing!" now) It looks pretty boring, huh? Obviously this thing needs some decoupage lovin'.




I apologize for the quality of these pictures. I live in what feels like a dungeon at times... 2 windows in the whole place. I also have no idea why the top of this thing looks so warped. That's my photography skills for ya..

Blue polka dot scrapbooking paper, mod podge and some new hardware (also a dumpster find), and she's all finished!







 I already finished my first sewing project on this thing but I can't share what that is yet. Its a surprise!