I’ve been following the blog 320 Sycamore for over a year now, and I’m always inspired by her “trash into treasure” success. I’m a creative person, but I do find it hard for me to be creative in the trash into treasure sort of way.


About a year ago Frank and Meredith hit some garage sales in our neighborhood, at that time allowing me some Saturday morning study time for my graduate degree (don’t miss those hours on the laptop!). Frank called about an old school desk available for I think $5 or $10. I figured you couldn’t really go wrong, and here’s what he brought home.

Ahh, classic. I’m sure many of us sat at desks just like this, although I bet some of them had wood tops at the time. This has been replaced by a Formica top.

It’s been sitting in our house for over a year now, but now that Meredith is in school, I wanted a dedicated homework spot, as well as a place to house some of her worksheets we need to keep working on, and her box of books she can read.

I started by removing the Formica top. It was simply screwed into the metal by 8-10 screws.

I then took a metal brush to sand the whole thing down, as well as work on getting rid of some of the rust.
Next came a coat of metal primer spray paint.

Meredith got total reign of picking the color, and she picked this plum color. I was hoping for a turquoise gloss, but we got plum flat.  After the primer dried, on went the purple.

When that was dry, the top was screwed back in.

Honestly the purple could probably use another coat, and I skimped a bit on the parts that aren’t as well seen- such as inside the cubby.

Overall I think it turned out well, and Meredith loves it!