A Desk Makeover and Autumn Chalkboard

Here are the last two projects from New Hampshire. The original plan was to place the table that we showed you last week on this wall here in the kitchen. It looked great here but poked out just a bit further than was ideal so while I was home we hunted through some of their old pieces in the basement to see if there was anything that might work in this space. At first it didn't seem like there was anything that would work but then I noticed an old desk that my mom had bought years ago for either $25 or $35 at a consignment shop. It was in great shape but not so appealing to look at. After having the boys lug it upstairs to see how it looked we realized that not only was it the perfect size, it was also functional. My parents had a similar desk in their last kitchen and it's so nice having a place to store pens, mail, stamps and all those little things that want to be handy but don't want cluttering up your counters.

So, after a quick coat of Kingsport Gray which they had leftover from another project, some distressing, a little bit of dark wax and a hardware change it was perfect for the spot! And we used knobs left over from their kitchen cabinets so they were free too! Eventually I'd like to replace the knobs on the two pull out drawers with cup pulls but I couldn't find the right ones while I was up there this last trip. And when we do find them we'll line them up evenly instead of how they are different right now. I didn't want to waste the time filling holes and drilling new ones until we had the cup pulls so I just put the new knobs in the same holes from the previous ones.

I love a free project! And even though my dad rolls his eyes every time we start a project (especially seeing how we had a wee bit of a paint spill during this project) I know he was secretly happy with this one seeing how he started filling it with things about ten minutes after it was in place. =)

My mom had found this chalkboard a couple of weeks before I was up there and I had fun writing a fall quote on it.

Ignore the color in these last couple of shots. I had bumped accidentally messed with my white balance somehow and of course didn't look down to check on any of the pictures so didn't realize it until I put them on my computer after I was back here in VA so it was too late to retake them. Ugh! The colors in the photos above show the wall color much better.

In this picture you can see how the newly painted desk looks with the fall vignette in the dining room.