In Focus

Ah, summer—the perfect time to tackle house projects. A lot of us have a summer to-do list for our home, whether it involves staining the deck or cleaning out clutter. The project list seems to grow bigger every year, and it often feels like a race against time to complete everything before the weather changes.

Now that I’ve finished cleaning and purging the basement, it’s time to move on to the next project. I have a large “L” shaped gray desk in my home office. It’s a nice desk, but it has suffered some damage over the years from water exposure and scratches. I’ve wanted to fix it for a while, and now it feels like the right time.

I began by removing everything from the desk, which comes apart in three pieces, along with a matching cabinet that has the same issues. I started with the cabinet to ensure my plan would work before tackling the larger pieces. I took out the drawers and took off the top, then sanded them down. After that, I covered them with a super sticky wallpaper. These pieces were then taken to the garage to be coated with water-based polyurethane for protection.

Applying the wallpaper was the most tedious part, as it has a pattern that I needed to line up with each new piece. My office is painted mint green with flowers and butterflies everywhere, so the light purple wallpaper covered in butterflies, stars, and moons is a perfect fit for my aesthetic. I applied several coats of polyurethane throughout the day and left everything to dry overnight. The process was fairly straightforward.

I managed to finish two of the three pieces of my desk but ran out of wallpaper while working on the third. Oh great—it was Sunday—and the wallpaper wouldn’t arrive until Thursday. Now that created a problem as I needed to get some work done.

Fortunately, I could partially reassemble the desk so that I could work, but my office is torn apart, and things are scattered everywhere, waiting to be sorted and put back in their proper place. Reassembling the desk would be the easy part; the cleaning and organizing will be more challenging.

As of this writing on Monday, I’m hoping to finish this project tonight so that I can get some work done in the morning. Here’s to hoping as goes well!