A Thrifty Week - Day 4 - The Project

So after the last few days of blogs, I am sure you are wondering how my "masterpiece" turned out.  Unfortunately, thanks to a new computer transfer and file clean up I did, I deleted the "before" picture of my project.  Bummer!  However, here are the pictures of the progress & the finished product (well, almost, since I have to find the hinges I had removed prior to painting so I can get the doors back on!). 

I didn't take any pictures of the sanding process, which took about 3 hours (all by hand), and was MESSY!  As an example of the mess I made, when we moved the drop cloth after the first coat of paint (I sanded, primed and got a coat on all in one day), I thought I had painted the garage floor (see below).

It turns out, that was all the reddish sawdust from sanding off the original finsh, which had then picked up some of the spray paint in the air.  A quick sweep proved sufficient to clean it up, and I avoided any HOA penalties for painting the public garage floor.  Whew!

Here is the primer (on one of the drawers):

I hope you can't see them too clearly, the original handles had two screws, and my new handles just have one, so you may be able to see where I filled in the original holes on either side of the new one.  Look closely!!!!!

I wasn't too worried about getting the primer on evenly, since the dark paint would cover any splotching...or so I thought.  

I painted one of the doors to the desk before any other pieces to check the color.  Here was my color check for the space, taking into consideration where in the house it would be:

I liked the color, so attempted my first coat of paint.  Wow, I am a terrible spraypainter!  It looked so much better during the painting than after it dried!

Luckily, a second coat fixed my splotching.  Since I did the second coat at night (with limited lighting), I took some pictures to make sure it was going on evenly.  Here was a check after finishing the side (notice the top still needs work):

Putting on the polyurethene coat was very quick and easy.  It calls for 2 coats, but I only did 1 since the desk will actually see little use (it is more for storage right now).

Here is the (mostly) finished product:

I did a satin polyurethene coat, and you can see it reflected the picture above the desk when I snapped this picture (so that orange on the surface is NOT a mistake).  As you can see, I am still on the hunt for those hinges, so will finish the lower doors tonight(I hope!) and then I will really be done.  However, it was still fun to share my project with you, since I am sure there are many of you out there who also have some mostly finished projects laying around...somewhere...right?

-Katie