I get so excited when I get to work on gorgeous pieces like this desk. It is a high-quality piece of furniture and came to me in pretty good condition. The few areas of damage, however, presented a challenge.
The top of the desk had a pretty deep scratch. While normally it could be easily sanded out, I wasn’t sure if the top was solid wood. Sometimes when you get too deep you end up encountering plywood–even on high-end brands of furniture. Luckily, I was able to sand deep enough and did not run into any problems. Crisis one averted!
The next trickier challenge was that two of the flower medallions were broken and missing. This proved to be a bit trickier to navigate, but I was able to create a mold by pressing epoxy putty onto one of the undamaged medallions and allowing it to dry. The following day I wet the mold and pressed the same epoxy putty into my mold to recreate the medallion shape. I trimmed it to shape and applied it to the desk. The only downside was that now I needed to paint the body of the desk to mask the fact that a different material made up two of the medallions.
With those fixes in place, I set to work on refinishing. I decided to paint the body of the desk a deep charcoal gray, and accent it with a medium brown stain on the drawer fronts and the top.
The entire desk was sealed with Polycrylic in a satin finish. I freshened up the hardware with metallic paint.
This piece is now ready for a new life as either a desk or a vanity.
