When To Say When?

A few months ago I purchased a lovely, vintage Thomasville Bali Hai Desk that I wanted to refinish.  I decided on painting it red after seeing a transformation at nattybydesign.com.  She used enamel paint and to achieve a lovely, shiny red on a Bali Hai Dresser.  

Here's how my desk turned out:  

and here's what it looked like before... 

Here's my steps:

1. Lazy girl here decided to skip the mineral spirits.  

2.  sand down the desk

3.  clean it

4.  paint it with three coats of the red paint (this took 4 days)

5.  restore the hardware like this. 

The Rust-oleum Protective Enamel was not fun to work with but it did leave a gorgeous mirror-like gloss on my desk.  No top coat required!  I would recommend this paint, but definitely apply it outdoors- it is oil-based and stinks!   

I had great plans for to use this beauty in the catch-all room of ours.  It was originally going to be a "mom only" room, but I realized that's an oxymoron in my home ;)  

But in the end, I wasn't thrilled with the desk in there anyway.  I currently have it in my family room and it is pretty, just useless.  (The girl child uses it as a craft table).  I've listed it for sale on Craigslist after I reluctantly admitted that there's just too much going on in there.  

Oh well, I'm learning to say "when."