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I’m so excited to refinish my desk now. I’ve been wanting to do it for about a year, had intended to do it last summer, but never quite got around to it.

With all of the ‘construction’ in my bedroom I found myself looking for some sort of valet tray, box, or something similar to set things in. A year or two ago when I started finishing these little wooden boxes I’d also finished a wood letter tray and had been using that, it just wasn’t exactly what I’d been wanting.

Originally I found this really nice unfinished wooden box at the craft store, given that I had all of the supplies to finish it, I gave that a go. Unfortunately it wasn’t tall enough to close with all of my little items in it, but upon seeing the deep ebony stain change the wood to something quite amazing it sparked interest in my other wood items.

We all know that one should apply some sort of finish on top of the stain. I had a couple of choices already, mainly the water-based Minwax polycrylic (and while it is total shit on top of Rustoleum silver paint it does work very nicely on stained wood) and the Minwax rub-on polyurethane. I’d used the rub-on poly on my poplar stemware rack after the Olympic deep ebony stain was applied. The rub-on poly was a nice finish, although satin, and of course it is synthetic.

Polyurethane is out of the question for my desk. I’d show a photo of my desk, but that would require cleaning up in the office, which at the time being is something I dread doing, so you’ll just have to wait until I get around to actually refinishing it.

My desk is what I’d refer to as “quasi-antique” in that it’s older than me, much older, but not so old as to really be considered an antique by most people, it was certainly made sometime in the the 20th century. To the best of my knowledge it is solid Mahogany, beautifully grained at that. It had been refinished by my father when we bought it for a total of $90 or so back in the very early 80’s, it’s been my desk since I started kindergarten, so I’ve had it for slightly more than twenty years. He refinished it using a very close match to the original stain, what I believe with good faith to be Minwax Cherry stain, then covered with (again with good faith belief) Formby Tung Oil Finish.

I cannot put a synthetic polyurethane on the desk because by doing so will totally destroy the aged “classic” look of the wood, it’d put a thick coat of “goo” on top instead. I also don’t need the durability that something like that would provide. Unfortunately, in a way, the desk should have had something like that on it (of course twenty years ago products like that were quite immature and would have been a huge mistake).

In the twenty years of owning the desk I’ve done some minor abuse to it. I just didn’t fully understand the value of such a fine wood desk as a child (no child would of course).

I’ve come to learn that, if built today using the same materials and craftsmanship, this desk would cost in the realm of $5000.00. Remember, it’s solid Mahogany, no veneer, no cheap filler wood, no “sawdust & glue” psuedo-wood; it’s the real deal, everywhere.

A year or two ago I bought a thick glass top to place over the desk in order to protect it, which will remain after the refinishing. I am not going to use the original hardware, of course I will be keeping it. It’s virtually impossible to find ‘modern’ hardware that will fit the borings for the current pulls, so I’ll be using these nice little polished and lacquered nickel knobs instead. These double knobs will fit into the existing borings without the need to fill & rebore — which is totally out of the question of course.

There are a lot of options for the 2.5″ boring available at Vandyke’s Restorer’s, but they’re mostly in the same style as the current hardware, and of course it’d be ghastly expensive to get enough of them in relation to the ultra-inexpensive knobs. I do really like these nickel bail pulls though, they’re not too terribly expensive, so sometime down the line it could be an option. I need to make sure that they’re covered in something though, given that I’m severely allergic to nickel, lol. I don’t want the skin to peel off my fingers after opening the drawers! Really, it’s happened before — when putting up my nickel ceiling fan all the skin from my hands peeled off! I also like Rustic Nickel Cup Pulls, but I’m not sure they’d look quite right.

Right, so the little wooden box I’d bought. I decided to try finishing it with traditional paste finishing wax, I used Minwax ‘natural’ after staining it with the Olympic Deep Ebony stain. I absolutely love the ‘glow’ and handrubbed effect I was able to acheive. I’m not quite sure the wax alone will be enough to protect the desk though, particularly given that the wax can be rather easily affected by water and heat… could be bad.

I’ve decided that the course of action will be to apply multiple coats of Formby Tung Oil Finish — which is really just a wiping varnish — after the stain, and then apply multiple coats of wax. I’m not completely sure that using the Ebony stain is the right way to go, since it’s cherry now, but I really like the rich chocolate brown and of course it is “oh so stylish” now (the chocolate brown/espresso). Since this stain is pigment based it doesn’t penetrate into the wood deeply and thus can be reversed in the future without too much difficulty. The dining room table that I intend to purchase someday is finished with the same deep ebony, thus I’m confident that having all of my wood look this way is the right way to go. It’s just… the grain pattern, I don’t want to obscure it too much.

I’m also a bit torn on if I should use a paint remover or a refinisher product. They are essentially the same, it’s just the paint remover is considerably stronger as it contains the highly toxic methylene chloride that can eat through finish the products without it cannot. The paint remover should be effective at removing all of the previous stain, whereas the refinisher is designed to leave the stain in the wood. I’ve read that removing the previous stain is probably a good idea when changing the colour, so I suppose that is the better of the two options, even if considerably more dangerous.

I’m also extremely nervous about refinishing something so supposedly valuable. The nice little perk here is that we have a second desk purchased around the same time period that I can ‘practice’ on. I’ve done a lot of finishing, just never any refinishing… I’ve also worked rather exclusively with ‘cheap’ wood, be it pine or basswood of the unfinished boxes from the craft store, or more recently the popular stemware rack I’d built.

The second desk had water damage to the varnish, I remember vaguely there being a rather large plant pot sized stain in the one corner of the top. Given this thick varnish coat and the damage my father decided to paint it… this rather hideous blue colour for some unknown reason. Thankfully, sort of, it was a “latex” paint, versus “acrylic” paint and thus isn’t a hard enamel finish like the modern acrylic paint can give. I know I’m not making a lot of sense here, but I’ve used both types in the construction of my MDF furniture, there are “acrylic” enamels that dry rock hard, whereas the “latex” paint, like the type we paint walls with, even in high gloss, is rather ‘dentable’ in comparision.

Since he’d never (as far as I know) sanded or otherwise prepared the surface of the ‘blue desk’ to receive the paint, it started immediately peeling and chipping off. The desk has looked horrid for as long as I can remember. My mother asked me the other night if the black acrylic enamel I’d used to paint the dresser (used as the bar) in my lounge would stick to the blue paint on the desk. My answer was yes, in that it stuck very well to the glossy surface of the dresser. I didn’t do any prep work prior to painting that, the paint was just a temporary measure to make it look better until I could find (the hard part) and purchase something more appropriate. I talked her out of the idea of painting the desk, offered to refinish it “properly” if she’d pay for the materials, she agreed.

I used some 60 grit sand paper to lift off the old blue paint, it turns out the drawers are faced with Mahogany like my desk! I’ll be able to test just how the ebony stain will look without applying a drop of it to my own desk, yay for that. The interior, bones if you will, of the desk is made out of something cheaper… I’m having a difficult time in determing just what it is, but I think it’s maple judging by the tone, grain pattern, and hardness. It could be something like sycamore, but I doubt that would have been used.

Unlike my desk, where the interiors of the drawers have also been finished, the drawer body for her desk wasn’t ever stained, it appears they were simply clear-coated. In a sense that makes her desk a lot easier, because I don’t have any reason to touch that. My desk, on the other hand, has been finished with the same cherry inside & out — though it looks like my father only did the outer surfaces when he refinished it all those years ago. It sort of puts me in another quandry, if I do finish the outside with ebony, the red tones of the drawers might end up looking quite odd. So… it seems that I ought to refinish those too, yay for even more work.

The plan of attack is to get experience by refinishing her desk, then this chest of drawers I have downstairs in my bedroom (which will move into the guest room once David moves out).. With those two pieces down I’ll only have my desk to go and in theory I should have enough experience to feel confident in tackling it.