Antique Secretary Makeover

Back in March I got a rush order from GordonDunning to refinish a dining room table, a pair of end tables, and an antique hutch… and by rush order, I mean, like 10 days. Ten days seems like plenty of time but, because I’m me and I don’t know the meaning of balance I went ahead and added a bamboo dresser and another pair of end tables to my schedule that week. So, five projects in 10 days. All that painting in such a short time period is what made me realize that I needed a paint booth to be able to work more efficiently. Time is money, baby!

Anyway, the antique secretary was the biggest transformation from that batch of work, here it is before:

It was really, really gorgeous. If you’re a purist and you’re hating me for painting this, believe me, this hurt me. Really just a good coat of Howard’s would have made it look amazing, but this is what their client wanted and I like money, so I did it. Don’t hate.

At least I didn’t use chalk paint.

The order was to paint the entire thing in a high gloss light gray (Passive Gray by SW) and re-felt the desk area in navy. Getting the old felt off was a bit of a chore but I tried all the methods I found on Google and the combination of all of those got it all off. You can use a heat gun or a cloth and an iron to heat the glue or you can saturate the felt with water and scrape it off and then address the adhesive residue with some Goof-Off… lots of options here, just be ready to put in some elbow grease.

Removing all of the hardware from this thing was crazy! It took two hours just to take it all apart!

And then it took another 9 hours to tape it all off!

The doors to the top section had to be taped off because each one of these sections of glass is its own. There wasn’t a glass panel to remove, each of these was set in. And they were thin as heck. I had so much anxiety about those doors.

Some of the hardware was in there so I had to tape it off and trim with an X-acto knife.

Okay, here she is in her new home!

The new felt makes a huge difference and wasn’t super hard to install.

I started by measuring the width of larger back section and the total depth of the desk and used my self-healing mat and a roller blade to cut it down. Then I used double stick adhesive tape to dry fit it to the wood. The image below looks as if the felt is in two pieces but it is actually one piece, there is a crease in the felt from where it hinges on the desk.

Then, using a super sharp X-acto blade, I cut the front smaller section to size. I removed the double stick tape and applied a heavy layer of extra strength spray adhesive to the back of the felt, making sure to get the edges really well, and put it in place on the desk.

Then I went around the edges with a credit card, smoothing and making sure it was really on there.

I haven’t even thought about this project since March and I’m just remembering what a huge transformation this was… Crazy what paint can do.

Before:

After:

And, just because, here are the pairs of end tables I did that same week:

These went to my booth at Woodstock Market.

And these went to the same home as the secretary, allll the way to Texas.

Okay, one more look at the secretary:

After:

Soooo… yeah, I painted an antique… but it’s kinda pretty.

I think I should get a pass on this one.

Wink.