Desk Restoration Project

I mentioned in a previous post that friend and reader jimmydunes donated an old wooden desk to the website. My intent is to refinish it, sell it, and use the money to fund the Prize Pool of the Puzzle for Charity.

The desk is technically an antique, but, then again, so are a large fraction of man-made objects on the globe, so I have no qualms about making this piece of furniture pretty and useful. I mean, what am I supposed to do, collect every damn thing I run across and put them on Mylar bags in case their value skyrockets overnight? No. I'm not going to be one of those octogenarians you read about that "go missing" only to be discovered underneath a mountain of old newspapers and National Geographics a couple of weeks later by concerned neighbors investigating the smell from next door.

See, there is such a thing as an object having "negative net value". In the case of the donor of this desk, it went from a useful piece of furniture in his old apartment to a big heavy pain in the neck in his new house. There was no good space for it in his new place so it would have remained dismantled in his garage or his shed out back, where it would get in the way a tiny bit every so often until, years later, he threw it away or gave it to charity after it accrued sufficient "PITA points". I think its cool that he decided to donate this now as part of his "clean house policy". He is definitely not the type to slap antique license plates on a rusted-out 1985 Chevette and proudly display it in his front yard or to try and steer work conversations around to classic cars so he could brag on it, is the point I am trying to make here. Thanks again, jimmydunes.

The desk, purchased from a now-closed used furniture shop in Lockport, NY, is solid wood (mostly poplar with oak trim, drawer, and veneer). Although it bears no official date marks the construction seems to indicate that it is from the late 50s or early 60s. The brass-coated tin pull handle on the drawer has the stamp 63-X3107 N.L.CO which I think might come from a defunct furniture manufacturer in Illinois. It is a well-used but not abused piece that looked like it just needed some TLC to make it look really nice.

The years and years of use really showed on the desktop. A dark shadow marked the "high traffic area" of the wood and water damage (from a planter, say) was apparent near the upper right hand corner. The finish had been worn down in these regions.

I had no interest in painting it, because the look I was going to shoot for with the desk was "Bob Cratchit". Nothing ornate. Just the type of well-worn yet well-maintained piece of dark, shiny, classic furniture that Scrooge's underling might toil at.

So, the first step was to sand the surface to start as clean as possible. I did not want to use a belt sander for this step because I wanted to avoid accidentally gouging the surface. It turned out that the top alone required me to use every single piece of 60 grit sandpaper I owned to get the dirty and water-damaged areas even close to the same color as the rest of the desk. It took about 8 man-hours to go from start to "OK, screw it, good enough" on the desktop alone.

Fortunately the sides, drawer, and trimwork took a lot less effort to get to a uniform shade.

I initially chose a dark stain and sealant combination for this project mainly in an effort to save time. I really should have known better - I prefer to do these steps separately because it gives me a higher degree of control over the project. In this case, the inside of the drawer was the first area to be stained and it simply looked terrible. It seemed like the wood didn't take to the treatment very well and everything was blobby and streaky. Fortunately, the inside of the drawer will be covered in dark green felt so this won't be an issue.

Speaking of the drawer I wanted to see if I could get the handle looking like new, and the first step to that was to clean it. It quickly became apparent that the brass coating on the drawer pull could not be salvaged so I would have to strip it down to the bare tin somehow. Bummer.

I put the mini wire wheel tool on my Dremmel to work on the issue and almost immediately regretted it. You see, my Dremmel is the cheap-o full-speed-or-off kind and the little wire wheel is pretty old and was not up to the task. It disintegrated quickly and steadily while I worked - fine wires pinging into my goggles and face and whatnot - and after about one minute my pain/annoyance threshold had been reached. I looked down to see about a hundred tiny metal needles sticking out of my t-shirt, as though I was just attacked by a miniature metal porcupine. Great. I took off my shirt and about 50% of the needles came with it or fell to the floor. The other 50% remained lightly lodged in the skin of my chest! They came out easily enough but that stopped the cleaning process until I can get a new wire wheel or come up with a better solution for dealing with the handle. On the upside, thanks to the impromptu high-speed acupuncture I no longer crave cigarettes and feel I have achieved perfect balance throughout my zang-fu. Thanks, Dremmel!

Back to staining. I switched to a dark stain and began treating the underside of the desk. it didn't take too long but it had enough fiddly bits to make me impatient to see how the actual visible surfaces were going to turn out. The outside surfaces of the drawer looked pretty good so I was pretty confident the top and sides would look awesome.

Wrong.

I guess I was unable to do a very thorough job sanding the surfaces down because it was very obvious that the stain was taking to some places better than others. I continued on with all the pieces since I was well past the point of no return once the problem made itself known.

It looks terrible. I am not too sure what I am going to do at this point but I hope I don't need to actually paint it (or crackle coat it) to make it look nice. Maybe some sort of varnish or shellac will put me back on track... I just don't know for now.

(To be continued...)