Old School Desk Project: frame finish and the desk top

 Hi Everyone,

Well, I've made a lot of progress with the desk-I've got a finish on the frame and I also got the old finish off of the desk top. Here's the photos and discussion:

The Frame

You'll remember how beat up the desk frame was when I first started. I honestly think someone at some point must have pushed it over a cliff and landed it on the rocks below! And the frame joinery is loose and wobbly as well. So I spent several days scraping off the old finish with cabinet scrapers and sand paper. I also cleaned up a lot of the scratches and dents on the edges of the frame parts:

Here's what it looked like afterwards:

Here's a photo of the entire frame. It got a lot more sanding after this:

I also found out that the panels are walnut plywood and the frame is a light colored hardwood of some type:

After all the scraping and sanding I sat down and did some research online about how to deal with a desk made out of several different types of wood (there's also poplar). There are a number of blogs and photos of old beat up furniture that has been re-painted, to marvelous effect. Several other projects showed furniture that had been restored and that looked really great too. I even put this questions to friends, should I paint or should I re-finish it?

As I'm not terribly good at painting or selecting colors I decided to re-finish it and bring it back to more of it's original state, with a few up grades thrown in for good measure. As a lot of the damage is still visible, I decided to go with a gel stain that would be less transparent but impart a good solid color. So I purchased a can of General Finishes oil based gel stain and brushed that on and I must say that worked very well. It covered up the damage and it also stained the different woods the same color:

After I took these photos I added a second layer of stain and it looks really nice. More about that later on.
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The Desk Top

I've looked at the desk top over and over during the years and thought about what the desk would look like when I finally got around to re-finishing it. Here are several photos of the top before I began working on it:

A lot of the finish wore off over the years:

And the edges of the top were really damaged and worn:

LOL, I love this one spot in the center of the photograph. It's a bunch of tiny holes, probably made by pencil or a pen in kind of a square shape. I can imagine a teacher in the past having a really bad day and taking it out on the desk top. I decided to leave that one spot there and not repair it!

I thought seeing as how the old finish was so battered it would easily come right off. It took several hours of scraping with cabinet scrapers to get it off. It was really tenacious:

Here it is with most of the finish removed:

And here is a photo of one of the corners. The edges were really a mess and the corners had been dented too so I sanded and filed these areas with sand paper and a wood file and they came out very well:

After the scraping, I sanded it completely with an orbital sander and then I wiped it down with mineral spirits to clean out the dust and this is what it looks like. You can see that it's book matched walnut veneer with a light colored wood for the edge:

It's really pretty. 

So for this part of the desk, instead of staining it, I'm going to stain only the edging and apply a clear polyurethane finished to the top so the grain will show clearly. 

What's next? My husband the engineer has offered to reinforce the frame with wood glue and screws and I think we'll have a posting about that. While he's doing that I'll be working on the drawers and the shelves and getting some new drawer pulls to replace the old ones. 

Stay tuned.
VW

Old School Desk project-the frame/scraping, sanding, and thinking about the finish

 Hi Everyone,

Well I've begun removing the old finish from the desk frame and what a mess that frame is in. I was right in that a lot of the joinery is old and no longer holding the frame together so as I go through this, I'm gluing and screwing the joints together. It's still rocks gently so I'll have to flip the frame over and run more screws in from a different direction.

The finish is pretty old-it's flaking off easily with cabinet scrapers. I also found out that it's been finished twice, probably once at the factory where it was made and again at another point in time. The original finish was reddish and the other finish was thick and very dark brown. It almost looks like molasses. I can see how it was just brushed on. And it's really dirty and there were quite a few spider nests in the corners underneath.

The surface of the wood is really beat up. Check this out:

Here's what it looks like after being scraped and sanded a bit:

There are still shallow dings in the surface. The entire frame is turning out to look like this and I'm wondering if I should paint the frame and leave the drawer faces and the top natural wood or should I stain the whole thing the same color?

I looked at some photos on Pinterest last night and saw a lot of old furniture that had been re-finished with paint and stain and some of the pieces looked amazing after they'd been finished. I'll have to think about this as I go.

The frame is enclosed with thin plywood panels that were stained the same color as the frame and I'm going to have to remove that part of the finish with paint remover as the surface is in good condition and the finish is still tightly adhered. More about that later.

Stay tuned,

VW

Old School Desk re-do project-Discussion and Plans

 Hello Everyone,

Well, it looks like autumn has hit-we're in the middle of an ice storm! It's cold and slippery outside so this is the perfect time for a project.

Many many moons ago I bought an old teacher's school desk at a yard sale. It had several owners before me and it showed-it had lots of dings, the finish was peeling off in places and I always thought it would be the perfect summertime re-finishing project. 

Fast forward about 35 or 6 years and I'm just now getting around to it. It's gone through several large scale moves and numerous smaller moves, the finish is still peeling off, and it's seriously dinged up. Also the frame is sagging so it needs help.

Here's a photo of it upside down

Plans

I've taken the top off and the drawers out. I'm going to assess the framework first. The desk had a noticeable sag in the middle so I'm going to be looking at all the joints and fixing them:

Then I'm going to remove the finish, then look at all the dings:

The legs are really banged up. Once that's dealt with, I'll sand it smooth and apply a new poly finish to it. 

The top is heavy and it has a walnut veneer on the top and of course the finish is peeling off of that as well. That will get sanded and finished.

Lastly the drawer joinery needs to be looked at and the drawer faces re-finished and maybe some new drawer pulls applied.

So hopefully by the time I'm finished I'll have a desk that will last another 100 years or so.

So stay tuned-we're off on another adventure.

VW