Before & After: A $10 Desk Gets a Glam New Look

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(Image credit: Submitted by Anne-Claire)

Anne-Claire was on a Craigslist hunt for the perfectly sized and perfectly priced desk for her daughter. After a few disappointments, she stumbled across this desk, which needed a little love but was otherwise exactly what she was looking for. The fixing up process took a little longer than Anne-Claire expected, but the final result was worth it.

(Image credit: Submitted by Anne-Claire)

From Anne-Claire: Now that my daughter is growing up, I started to look for a small desk to replace her little child table. I didn’t want to buy something new, but I really wanted something with character. I have been looking for months on Craigslist, hoping to find a small antique desk for a reasonable price. But everything was either too big, or way too expensive for a child’s room…until I found this poor little black desk for $10. It needed so much love (more than I thought at first) but I loved the style. And for $10, it was worth giving it a chance.

So I brought it home and got to work. I replaced the top made of un-salvageable wavy Masonite (not sure that Masonite can ever be salvageable anyway). Then one of the drawers felt too big for its spot, kept getting stuck, and had to be rebuilt. The easy part was repainting it all, spray-panting the rusty metal feet and replacing the drawer pulls.

It took me a lot longer than expected. But it’s like every project that takes you too long: at some point, you only seem to see the problems and think it will never work. But now that it’s in my daughter’s bedroom, I can’t see the defects anymore and I just love it!

Time to move on the a next project (hopefully an easier one)!

Thank you Anne-Claire!