Tuesday, July 28, 2009

If Only . . .

If only I had a spare $1200.00, I would buy this.

Instead, I picked up some old student desks for free (thanks to freecycling), but they aren't pretty in the slightest. My kids don't care, though. They think the desks are the coolest thing in the world. They love to color, do worksheets, and other independent stuff at their desks (which I think is GREAT!). But I hate how they - the desks, not my kids - look, and I really want to refinish them. The only problem is, I think the tops are made out of formica, and I don't know where to begin, or if I can even do anything about them. I really want to make them pretty. Can I paint over them? Could I sand them down? I've never been into crafts, and I'm about as clueless as you can get when it comes to stuff like this. But I'm willing to work at it if I only knew what direction to head in. Here is a photo of one of the desks. The other one looks similar, only the top is a brown, wood-looking surface, but it feels like formica too.



I know the metal part I can spray paint, but it's the surface I need the most advice about. I really think it would be cool if I had crushed flowers or something really pretty on top, with a smooth varnished surface of course. Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, offers of help would be great. The blogger world can be pretty amazing, and maybe someone out there knows something that can help. Here's hoping!

6 comments:

Cathy said...

This may be a really dumb suggestion (I'm not crafty either) but what about contact paper? Or, maybe you could put the crushed flowers down under a thin piece of clear plastic and glue it down somehow. Anyway. Probably shouldn't be making suggestions, but there you go. Fun find, though!

Mosers said...

You could put flowers between two layers of plexi glass, spray paint one sheet of plexi glass to hid the surface, once you have everything pressed you can just screw it to the top of the current desktop... if that doesn't work, you could place fabric down and then put plexi glass over that... you could do a printed piece or you could t-stain a cream piece of fabric and place flowers on that and then put the plexi glass on top of that and screw it all in.. just make sure your fabric is glued or it will twist when you try to screw into it! You could put hole punches in the fabric where you want the screw to go!!! Good luck... let us see when you are done

paulak said...

Julie, Alicia sent me your blog address and said you were looking for some ideas. This is a hobby of mine, to refinish old, secondhand furniture. Here's my idea...take it for what its worth. Get some cute scrapbook paper, or wrapping paper, fabric or even what Cathy suggested, contact paper that you like and spray adhesive, or modge podge it down. Then to keep it nice, you can cover it with an epoxy clear finish. If you want help with the steps and products to use, let me know. You could also give it a good sanding (just to rough up the surface) and paint it, but you would still need to finish with a clear coat of epoxy. I like the idea of flowers too, again with a finish on the top.

wendys said...

Well all those suggestions are way better than anything I would have come up with! You can do it! I've never heard of freecycling.... I will look into it!

Sarah and Jeremy said...

You are amazing and It's gonna look great when you're done. My suggestion was to just sand it and try painting since you think it's ugly anyway. :)

Katie Lee said...

I do love freecycling. It is fantabulous! Good luck with those desks, I'm sure whatever you do will look awesome! Definitely post the final result so we can all see how it turns out!