Antique Writing Desk Makeover

This post is for my mother-in-law as she has not seen this finished product yet!

When she came to visit us last month, my MIL was on the lookout for a small end table for her living room so we went on a little thrifting adventure. She discovered this antique desk in my local Salvation Army Thrift Store for $8.99. It was the size and style that she was looking for but it was pretty beat up. If you know me, I love the challenge of fixing up old damaged furniture and giving it a brand new life. The more beat up a piece is, the more creativity it requires to make it fabulous once again. And I seem to have an unlimited stash of creativity to revive old broken things!

Whenever I start working on an old piece of furniture, I try to figure out when and where it was made. Sometimes there are clear markings on the furniture indicating a date and manufacturer, however, that was not the case with this desk. I couldn’t find any markings whatsoever. So I did a Google image search to see what AI had to say about it.

“This appears to be a small antique side table, likely a French Provincial or Louis XV style writing table or desk. The table is made of wood, with some sources suggesting cherrywood, walnut, or oak, and features cabriole legs and one or two drawers. It is described as a side table, writing desk, or library table.”

Another search indicated that it was likely produced between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, making it at least a century old, which definitely qualifies as antique status. While some antique furniture can be worth a decent amount of money, when there is lots of damage through years of wear and tear, old furniture can easily be reduced to nothing more than junk that gets left on the curb or dumped at a thrift shop. And that is my favorite kind of junk to find!

This desk was in pretty bad shape and I was unsure if I would be able to adequately repair it so we also bought another end table for $6.99 as a back up in case I ended up damaging the writing desk even more. I know I should stop doubting my capabilities when it comes to refurbishing old broken furniture but I am still new to this business so my confidence is lacking. As it turns out, I didn’t need that back up end table so I refurbished that one as part of bedroom set that I gifted to a friend. Stop back to tomorrow to see how that project turned out!

For now, let’s get back to this project. First, repairs were needed. Some of the layers of wood were separating from each other, so I peeled off the top two layers which turned out to be kind of difficult. There was still some separation of the wood layers so my husband secured those spots with wood glue and stabilized the legs which were a bit wobbly in their old age. Then I gave the whole thing a good sanding to remove any chipped pieces that I may have missed.

My MIL requested a light neutral colored paint that had an “antique quality” so I mixed up some neutral paints that I had on hand to make a custom colored chalk paint in a light shade of grayish white.

Once I applied the color and lightly distressed it, I noticed that the desk top still had some slight signs of warping around the corners. To camouflage the warping and add some extra details, I wanted to decoupage something on the desk top. I first started with beautiful floral tissue paper and attempted to make it look like a table cloth angled at the center of the table. What a mess I made! The whole thing got wrinkled and torn so badly that I had to scrub it all off and start over.

Because I made such a mess with the decoupaging, my second thought was to stencil something on the top. After practicing some stencils on paper, I didn’t really like it so I ditched that idea. But a tiny triangle of the pretty floral tissue paper was still attached to the back of the desk. This gave me the idea to decoupage smaller pieces of tissue paper along the top edge of the desk. Smaller pieces go on easier with less opportunity for wrinkling and tearing.

Once I had the triangles attached, it still looked unfinished so I tore some old book pages into heart shapes and created three cascading heart chains on the table top. It still looked a bit off so my final touch was a stipple design using paint pens. Using the colors of the floral tissue paper, I stippled around the shapes of the hearts and then finished it with complete randomness in my dotty design.

Finally, I wanted to make the inside of the drawer more interesting, so I decoupaged some more book pages inside along with the floral tissue paper and my practice stencil that I did on a paper doily. Next, I ran some sand paper over it to lightly distress it and sealed it with furniture wax. Then I ditched the old glass drawer pulls and replaced them with pretty lavender ones.

At first, I wasn’t sure if I liked the completed table which made me worried that my MIL might not like it either. However, as it has been sitting in my dining room for the last few days, it has really grown on me and now I love it. I just hope she loves it, too. If not, there are always doilies to cover it up!

My husband will be delivering the desk to his mom in just a few weeks. I can’t wait to see it all set up in its new home!

What do you think? Is it too wild for an antique desk or is it just right?

Keeping it on the edge,

Shelbee