Sorry Friends, I'm Keeping This One For Myself!

You know that saying, "the cobbler's kids have no shoes?" That's me! I have a store with all kinds of furniture re-creations, yet my own house is lack luster. I only have three pieces of furniture that I have re-done myself. One is the dresser I transformed, intended to sell but ended up keeping...seen here.  The second piece is a cabinet that I got at a yard sale for $5 and transformed into an open storage piece for games. I'll show pictures of that one later. And, the third was my Grandmother's dining room hutch. I painted it and put it in my daughters room to use as a dresser. That's currently on the list to be re-done.

I'm feeling motivated these days to make some transformations at home, and among the list of top priorities is changing the nursery into a guest bedroom and turning our living room into a family room and family room into a living room. Awaiting my living room to family room transformation is a great antique desk.

I've had this desk for sometime and have been hoping to sell it as a custom refinishing job in the store. But, the longer it sat in the back waiting for someone else to love it, the more I fell in love with it myself. Besides the fabulous construction, I love the great curves and debth.

I've decided to make it my own. I'm putting it with some other pieces that are black, but I want to incorporate more wood tones, so I decided to re-stain the top and paint the base, adding some medium distressing to bring the natural wood tones out.

Before I painted it, I was concerned that the existing hardware wouldn't look good against the black paint, but once I put it back on, I really like how it looks. It doesn't pop against the black, but is subtle, and blends throughout the entire piece.

Wood top stained in a darker oak color called Provincial. Has more red hues than I would have liked, but it works.

Before meets After!