Metallic Herringbone Desk

I picked up a waterfall desk from a local thrift store a little while ago.  It had black painted drawers, a sad and flakey wood finish, and no handles.

 

Now, I’m in love with all the two-toned painted/stained wood combo pieces I’ve been seeing around lately.  Here’s a few particularly lovely examples:

 

White Butterfly

 

Design Sponge

 

The Lettered Cottage

 

European Paint Finishes

 

European Paint Finishes

Since this desk was already going in that direction, I decided to run with the two-toned look.  I repainted the drawers with a fresh coat of black, but then came the special touch I’ve been teasing about on the Facebook page.

Herringbone!!

I used the above example as my inspiration.  I loved that the neither the verticals or horizontals were perfectly spaced or even.  It gives it a more organic and loose feel than the very geometric and measured chevron design we’ve been seeing everywhere.

So I started off by drawing the vertical lines with a pencil using a yard stick straight edge.  No measuring.  This is a time when you actually want variation in the spacing of your lines (if you look at the example above.)  Once I had the pencil lines drawn from the top drawers to the bottom (so the pattern would continue from one drawer to the next,) I used a silver paint pen to hand-draw the vertical lines.  Again, you’re not going for perfectly strait lines here.  The variations give it the look we’re going for here.  :)  Once your vertical lines are all drawn and dry, go back and add in all the diagonal ticking.  It sounds tedious, but it really does go very fast.

When I was done, I added some black cup pulls that I bought from Ebay.  It was a little tricky shopping, since the hole spacing was an irregular 2 3/4” c-c, but I found these cup pulls for $2 a piece and they worked out great!

The wood finish was extremely warn, and came off fairly easily with a little elbow grease. I used my orbital sander on the large, flat parts, and hit the details and corners with some sand paper and my hands. Once I had it stripped down to the bare wood, I used my favorite go-to stain, Minwax Dark Walnut.  I also plan on adding a satin Verathane top coat, but I’m waiting until I have all the projects I’m trying to finish this week lined up, so I can spray them all at the same time.  Efficiency of motion people!  ;)

And here she is all (well, almost) finished up!

I heart this piece big time!  Like look-all-around-my-house-for-someplace-to-put-it LOVE.  But I don’t have a place for it, so it’ll go over to Livy Lou’s as well.  There’s going to be a furniture open house there next week in preparation for Black Friday and the holiday shopping season.  I’ll make sure to do a proper introduction of the shop soon, I promise.  :)

My mother-in-law is coming over this morning to help out with the little kids while I get some furniture work in, including a whole lot of poly spraying.  :)  Wish me luck!

Linking to:

House of Grace, Sassy Sites, Primitive & Proper, Domestically Speaking, Somewhat Simple, Perfectly Imperfect, The Shabby Creek Cottage, Finding Fabulous, The Shabby Nest, Sassy Sites, Chic on a Shoestring, Miss Mustard Seed, Family Ever After, Tatertots and Jello, I Heart Naptime, Beneath My Heart, Thrifty Decor Chick