Hey Friends!! Another guest post for y’all on this lovely Wednesday!! If you’ve missed the other posts this month be sure to check those out because they are all AMAZING. Today I have the honor of introducing you to Erin from DIY Passion. This girl can flip a piece of furniture like nobody’s business!! Painted pieces, stained pieces, DIY built pieces!! Plus she lives right on the water and she represents that beachy, nautical feel in her home so well. I think you’re going to LOVE her, I sure do!!
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Hi everyone! I am Erin from DIY Passion and I’m super excited to be here at Houseologie sharing one of my DIY projects with you! A little bit about me – my husband Dan and I run our blog as a team and we are big fans of up-cycles, vintage finds, thrift store rescues and the like. We never shy away from a paint job and have an almost unreasonable love for power tools. Hopefully you get a chance to hop on over, you can read more about our journey on our About Us page.
Today, I thought I’d share one of my absolute FAVORITE projects with you. We are knee-deep in a makeover in our basement family room at the moment. It’s a multi-purpose room that includes a tv-watching area, storage and a small office area for blogging and photo editing. We picked up this old waterfall desk on a recent thrift store trip. Dan instantly loved it.
We had been using an ENORMOUS Ikea desk that was eating up the whole room, so when we saw this smaller and solid wood desk being sold for a song – we knew it was the one.
I was pleasantly surprised at two things:
- The top part of the desk pops right off
- The kid paint all over the front came off fairly easily with some sanding and scrubbing
All we had to do was decide on a style. Dan really wants the room to feel a bit masculine, but also nautical. Less turquoise and sea glassy and more ship’s captain and rugged. We settled somewhere in the middle for this desk, opting for a wonderful white in an atypical finish.
Painted Waterfall Desk: How we Did It!
After priming the whole piece, I painted three solid coats of PARA Paints’ Crysler Hall White – but the trick was I used trim paint. It has a glossier finish than I’d typically use on furniture – but for this desk, it’s amazingly perfect. It gives it a sheen and a lustre that will look awesome in the basement space.
As for the top, we did something a little different as well! We clad it in a navy blue vinyl. It was a little complicated in that we had to use our table saw to shave 1/4 inch off two sides of the top to make it fit in place with the vinyl – but after that was done it was as simple as wrapping a present, adding in some staples and popping it back in place.
The bonus of using the vinyl is that the computer mouse will glide smoothly! AND – it’s super easy to keep clean. We tend to eat and work at our desks a lot, so crumbs and soda can rings are a reality 🙂
We were going to do some rope detailing, but as soon as we saw this brass hardware at the store, we both knew it would be the perfect thing to add visual heft and ‘manliness’ to the piece. Waterfall desks have amazing lines – characterized by the traditional curved front – and we didn’t want to detract from that in any way.
We are both quite enamoured with this painted piece. I know I say this often – but I think this is my favourite makeover we’ve done in a while 🙂
If you’d like to check out more of our furniture posts, make sure to stop by our Before & After page where there are more than two dozen flips!!
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-Erin
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