Simply Beautiful By Angela

creating simple beauty on a budget

Vintage Thomasville Desk Makeover

Happy Thursday! Today’s post is all about the long and tiresome journey of how I saved this beautiful vintage Thomasville desk.

Supplies Used:(Affiliate links may be provided for convenience.  For more info, see my full disclosure here.) 

Although it looks nice in the picture above. It was in pretty rough shape!

There were a couple coats of stubborn paint that had some rough brush strokes so the entire thing needed to be stripped. I started with a coat of my trusted Citristrip on the top.

I let it sit under plastic wrap for about an hour before coming back and starting to scrape.

After I scraped all that I could off, I went over the surface with steel wool and mineral spirits to remove as much of the gunk as I could.

I finished up with the sander to get it all the way cleaned up.

The whole process was so labor intensive and the top alone took me probably around 2.5 hours! And the fun didn’t stop there, I moved on to the drawers next. For those I used the orbital and then I used a chisel to get the areas that it couldn’t reach.

The next day I moved on to the sides which I found scraped off pretty easily with the chisel before going back with the orbital.

After hours and hours and hours, it was finally stripped!

Almost haha. I had to go back in and get the small detailed areas by hand.

I’m sure by this point you’re thinking, “you’re not thinking about putting more paint on after spending all that time taking paint off, are you?!”

Unfortunately the whole piece was comprised of a failing veneer so keeping it all wood was not an option. I used Bondo spot putty to repair the areas that needed it then taped off the wood accents before applying a clear shellac primer.

The next day I applied the paint and then peeled back the tape off the wood accents before applying polyacylic.

Here is how it turned out!

I love how the wood accents really ended up popping against the light paint color.

I kept the original hardware and simply added some Rub n Buff to clean it up.

I forgot to mention that the top did need a couple coats of bleach to match the other wood detailing, so I worked on that before applying the polyacylic.

This was one of those pieces that I deeply wished that I had the space to keep!

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Comments

  2. Hi, love seeing how you refinished my beautiful desk! I still absolutely love it!! I’ve been following your work and was so interested in a few other pieces but you had sold them already. Still waiting and watching however to see what amazing things you have in store.
    Thank You again

  4. Wow! What an amazing transformation. Stripping furniture and removing all the paint from the small nooks and corners is a lot of work. The end result is just beautiful! The photos you shared are very helpful.

  6. You did a beautiful job restoring this old desk. I love how you let parts of the natural wood show through. Would you believe I had this exact same desk for many years. It use to be my grandmothers, and when I inherited it, it was painted white with linoleum glued to it. It was hysterical. I stripped it down and stained it a dark brown which it has been ever since. Now it is in my daughter’s home. It’s stayed in the family for four generations. That’s amazing! The stories the old desk could tell!

  7. This is absolutely beautiful! What paint color did you use?
    After all that work it IS a shame you can’t keep it! 😁 Love it!

  9. That’s just gorgeous Angela! I love your vision of the natural wood against the painted sections, and you did a beautiful job! I, like Amy, also inherited a desk almost exactly like this one. You’ve given me inspiration to redo it. Thanks so much!