This Week's Project: The Goodwill Desk....


Now that I have another bedroom...I really needed a desk so I could actually have somewhere to put all of my school junk! Enter the $25 Goodwill desk. The second picture is the keyboard panel pulled out, it gives you a better picture of the before color. It's your typical 90's honey oak color. Bleh.


I bought it as soon as I saw it, knowing that I could probably find some cool way to paint it on Pinterest. It actually has an attachment with a little shelf that goes on top, but I wanted to make sure I had enough stain before I did that part too.

Instead of painting, I found what seemed to be like the easiest method ever to re-staining furniture or cabinets. I figured I might as well give it a shot. If you decide to do this, definitely read the tutorial! Basically you use a gel stain to refinish so it still looks like wood and you see the grain, instead of painted. You don't really have to sand or prime, or anything. I am lazy when it comes to those steps, so perfect!

She lists all the specific things necessary on her blog, but the only ones you probably don't have around your house already are these 2 guys. The gel stain and poly-urethane top coat. They were less than $9 each and I had plenty. I used Java, which is the darkest color, because that's what she did. I'm curious to see what the other colors come out to look like!

I ordered the gel stain and top coat from amazon and and it was here in just 3 days. I only ordered the little baby 1/2 pint of each for this desk and I still had a some left over. According to this Monica, who's instructions I was following, you absolutely have to use the General Finishes brand. I was skeptical (that had paid endorsement all over it) and I think you could probably get away with another brand, but I went with it just the same. Why not, right?

First you just clean the wood with some general cleaning solution...aka Clorox wipes, and lightly sand. I probably spent no more than 10 minutes on the whole desk. Your really just getting the funk off of it, you aren't trying to sand layers off. So blogger Monica says to apply the gel (which looks like pudding) with a man's sock. Well I was fresh out of those, so I just used a foam brush...back to the lazy with small steps

This is what the first coat looked like going on...you do really thin layers, which is easy with the gel. (See the pudding??)



 And this is after 1 entire coat. I weirdly liked it at this stage and thought it kinda looked antique. Putting that in my back pocket for later. You can see its super streaky. It reminded me of what a treasure chest should look like, if you ever need one of those.

I waited 24 hours for the 2nd coat. You only had to wait 12, but I was not about to do another coat at 2am.

This is the top after the second coat, you can see the original color on the back panel:

I almost stopped at this step, because I thought it looked pretty and weathered, but for scientific research, aka my curiosity/boredom, I waited another 24 hours and applied a 3rd coat as instructed.

As usual, I should have listened to the person who knew what they were talking about. I did the 3rd coat with a sock instead of a sponge brush and good grief did it go on faster and smoother! It probably took me less than half the time when I switched to the sock.

To be honest, I didn't really understand what she meant by applying it with a sock. Turns out you literally just put a sock over your hand (make sure you have a glove on under) lightly dip your fingers it in the gel and lightly wipe across the wood. Super simple, silly me. Should've listened.

Side note, if you do want a more weathered or rustic look, you would want to use the sponge brush.

After the 3rd coat with the sock:

Disclaimer, it is a little darker than these pictures. It is pretty much the darkest brown there is before black, but its pretty! Also, please disregard the random drum paraphernalia on the floor, my wonderful fiance has no where to keep it so I ended up with it...

So at this point, my girl Monica says to let it sit for 5 days before applying the top coat. If you notice a trend...I didn't want to. I applied the last coat of gel Saturday morning and the first top coat Tuesday afternoon. It came out just fine.

I applied 1 coat of the gel poly top coat with a sponge brush, let it sit for 24 hours, and did another. This does go on a little thicker than the stain, so I went through more of this, but still had plenty for 2 coats. I had to move the desk inside because rain started to come in my patio during the 3 1/2 day drying period and I couldn't deal with moving it back outside to do the top coat. I would recommend doing the poly outside or at least well ventilated. I got a little light headed!

The last thing I did was add a little knob from Hobby Lobby to the drawer for some extra pizazz. "The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize" right? Thanks, Steel Magnolias. I had some issues since I don't own a drill. That's an hour of my life I don't want to think about again.

In the end, I am in love with the result. I think it came out pretty amazing!  The close up picture looks black. In person it is very dark brown, like the picture on the right. This is after 3 coats of gel stain and 2 coats of poly-urethane.

There is basically no way to screw this method up. She did it with cabinets and they looked amazing. Even the most un-crafty person can handle this. For real, I don't see a way you could mess this up. If you are doing something like cabinets, I would say to try it out on a piece of wood that's the same color, just to make sure it comes out how you want. I read one blog who used a mahogany color and it ended up looking really red next to her counter tops. Other than that, this shouldn't be intimidating to anyone.

Not count the drying time (because you don't actually do anything) I'd say it took me about 4-4 1/2  hours total. All the materials, including the original desk, cost about $50. Not too bad I'd say! It's a super easy way to bring a bleh piece of furniture back to life!