Fireglow

Tah Dah! 

A little love, LOTS of elbow grease, sandpaper, spray paint, primer, and paint = my fabulous new desk!

It all started with my new love of Mid-Century Modern furniture. I had been scouring Craig's list for a desk or table in that style that I could fix up. They are so popular though that they go fast. But I didn't give up and eventually I found this one at an estate sale and snatched it up for $30 along with some other goodies!

I was really inspired by some of the things at CB2 this season like this chest and this sideboard. With my inspiration in hand, off I went to home depot to find some paint to match. The winner was fireglow!

Here's how it's done:

1. Take all the hardware off and sand every surface that will be painted to create a better texture for the paint to stick to. Wipe everything off. 
2. Coat it with primer before you paint.
3. Tape off any areas you don't want paint to get on. This should have been done before the primer though OOPS. Well, at least I remembered after the first coat. Especially tape off the sides of the drawers so it doesn't look messy when they are open. 
4. I did two coats of primer. 
5. I was very happy I took the time to prime because you can see how thin the paint is with this first coat. 
6. After you have painted it with enough coats that it looks even and the primer is not showing, you can take all the tape off and put the hardware back on. 
7. It took four coats of paint on the body and about six on the top part to get this bad boy to look like this. 
8. The hardware also needed to be prettied up. Details on that below.

1. Before: It was painted faux wood. Not the look I wanted.
2. Spray stripper all over it and let it sit for a while. Use gloves like it tells you to because even if you are very careful it WILL get on you and it BURNS like hell. 
3. Of course it burns! Look how it just made the paint flake right off of that metal. 
4. Scrape all the paint off ...
5. and sand whatever the stripper wasn't able to get off so that everything is nice and smooth. 
6. Spray paint it...I went with a shiny metalic silver that I thought would go well with fireglow