Vintage Upcycled Office Desk Home Makeover Project

Step 1: Find an Old Desk

You may have your own desk in need of a makeover or are looking to find one. Fortunately, they are usually quite easy to find.

This desk was from Facebook Marketplace and cost £40 a few years ago. 

£40 is a little more than I would normally spend on a piece of furniture. But it’s large, feels substantial and has very deep desk drawers for lots of storage.

I’ve also found desks previously in charity shops and on Freecycle. Charity shops aren’t always the thrifty find that they used to be but they’re always a good place to start for a furniture makeover.

If you’re working in a small space like me? A great way to move the desk around is to put the desk legs on wheels. It’s more convenient to move the furniture rather than yourself!

Step 2: Repair Office Desk Damage

With an old piece of furniture such as a vintage desk, there’s a good chance that you’ll need to do some repairs. For deep scratches on the existing tops, you can use wood filler to help give them a perfectly smooth finish.

Fortunately, this work table didn’t need any significant changes or repairs.

But there was some veneer damage. It’s a good idea to repair issues with furniture before starting cleaning or prepping it. Because it’s likely to need cleaning again after the repairs are done anyway.

The veneer on the sides of the drawers had a little bit of damage on both sides. One was chipped and the other had bubbled up. It was just a thin strip in both areas, so an easy fix.

An excellent way to remove the broken veneer is to simply scrape it off with something sharp like a Stanley knife. 

The glue will be visible underneath the veneer, so you can use 80-grit sandpaper to sand that smooth before applying the new piece of wood veneer.

Replacement veneer comes in strips of different wood types. It’s thin enough to cut with scissors after measuring the size you need. You then apply wood glue and let it dry.

Finally, use an iron on medium heat to secure the veneer in place. 

Step 3: Prep Desk Before Refinishing

After repairs, the next step is to prep the furniture before refinishing. Whatever condition your furniture is in, you will always need to prep it. This is both sanding and cleaning. 

Rarely, you don’t need to at least scuff sand a surface before painting. Exceptions would be when you are painting a laminate or metal surface. In this case, an easy way to paint them is with an adhesion primer like Slick Stick.

With a veneered surface, you need to be careful when sanding so that you don’t make a hole in the veneer. Veneer is very thin strips of wood so it’s easy to do. 

Initially, I started sanding with 180-grit sandpaper, being cautious to not be too abrasive to help protect the surface. 

But the 180-grit barely made a dent in the finish. To make quicker progress, I moved on to an 80-grit sandpaper. Which worked much better. 

You then need to work your way through the grits of sandpaper until you have a smooth finish. You can typically finish at 180 or 220-grit. 

Different ways to remove old paint or varnish is with a chemical stripper. It depends on whether you prefer the speed of a stripper versus the mess it makes. There is always a balance.

Cleaning the old Desk

Lastly, to prep the desk, you need to clean it. If you do this after sanding then you also remove sanding dust as well as any grime.

For this, I diluted a TSP cleaner with warm water. If you make a solution and leave it in a spray bottle then you don’t need to make a batch each time you need it.

Step 4: What Type of Paint Do You Use on a Desk?

When painting furniture, using low-VOC paint is ideal for indoor use. This was a low-VOC brown chalk paint called Coffee Bean. 

As for this desk, I wanted a warmer, chocolatey kind of look. 

The desk had some interesting grain on the veneer that I didn’t want to completely cover. So I went with a paint wash. Which is when you dilute paint with water to create a more translucent look.

It might take more coats of paint, depending on the look that you’re going for. But you can build up the colour more slowly until you’re happy with the result. 

To even out the colour of the desk, the first step was a coat of a warm beige called Cobblestone. This helps the later coats of Coffee Bean to look more uniform over the base coat of new paint.

If I hadn’t planned to do a dark colour for the desk makeover, Cobblestone would have been a lovely colour to refresh the desk with.

Step 5: Make a Paint Wash for a Desk

There is no one-size-fits-all for a paint wash. 

You can do any ratio of paint to water depending on how see-through you want the result to be. If you want the paint to look more like a tint then you might mix 20% to 80% water. 

For a much more opaque look, you can reduce the water to 20%. It’s best to test on a small area first to see the look you want.

If you want the grain to be visible still, you would have a higher amount of water in the paint wash.

And remember that you’ll likely need a couple of, or more, coats with a paint wash. So the first coat doesn’t need to look how you want the end result to be.

This desk needed two coats of Coffee Bean to get to the coverage that worked for me. 

I love the dimension of the paint wash over the Cobblestone. Depending on the angle, and how it catches the light, it shows different colours and looks beautiful.

Step 6: Do You Need To Seal a Painted Desk?

You should seal any highly-used piece of furniture painted with chalk paint. And as this desk took several years to get a makeover, it needed a durable top coat.

Typically with darker colours it can be helpful to mix a splash of the paint colour with the sealer to help reduce streaks. But as this was a paint wash, it might change the look of the layers that had been built up. 

So, I applied a Satin Clear Coat with a roller. A roller is a good way to get an even application across large flat surfaces such as the top of the desk. 

It always looks a bit worrying when applying the sealer. But as long as there are no blobs of sealer built up, then it will dry clear. 

Satin has a good medium level of durability. This desk has two coats of sealer on the frame and a third coat on the desktop.

Step 7: Painting Metal Desk Handles

The last thing was to update the handles. The handles were naturally the perfect size but just not the look I wanted. So, instead of the additional cost of buying new drawer pulls, I simply painted them.

To paint the metal handles, firstly you need to prep them with two coats of Slick Stick. 

Then for the colour. I wanted a colour that went well with the dark brown desk. But also something with a bit of interest. 

The best option was to go for a bronze. Which is essentially metallic brown. It tied in with the brown but also added some shine.

How To Make an Old Office Desk Look Better

When you have something that needs repairing or refreshing, it can be distracting. You always see the things that need to change.

If you work from home then your office furniture probably gets used a lot. It needs to be somewhere you feel comfortable. This updated desk is now a cleaner and cosier place to be.