A few *cough* 4.5 *cough* years ago, Bill and I were driving along when we suddenly saw this cute, little desk on the side of the road with a FREE sign. We grabbed it and brought it home. I cleaned it up and promptly became busy / forgot about it. Fast forward to now...
 |
| The (Very Dirty!) Free Roadside 1956 Desk |
Finally, with the old office painted (post coming soon!) and sort of empty, I got motivated to get the desk taken care of. And actually, I was sick of using my personal computer on top of the Ikea Expedit... no leg room. I decided I would just paint the whole thing and put on new handles.
I already had the paint and just needed the handles, which turned out to be a lot harder to find then you would think. I searched the internet and never found anything... What I liked in any given style didn't have the finish I wanted and when I could find a finish I wanted, I didn't like any of the styles. And that was without looking for the proper size...
I should probably mention that the finish was important to me... Actually the handles in general were important. The original ones were destroyed. The metal was pitted and just in a horrible state. They were actually chrome, but... the original caps on the feet are brass. Those were still in good condition (even after hanging out in our garage for a couple years). I thought it was best for the new handles to be close in finish to the caps. Because the caps were old and not shiny anymore, I thought some sort of a not shiny brass finish would be best.
I asked Bill to help look online because for some reason he is the master of Google search terms. He came up with a local store called The Brass Handle. It's located in the downstairs of the Galleria mall in Edina, MN. Picking something out took two trips there, which ended up being for the best. The same fantastic woman helped both times. I really wish I could remember her name to give her a shout out, because she was so helpful and awesome!
There were lots of options in the store, lots of options I liked. It then came down to price and the fact that I needed 7 handles. I guess size options as well were a factor. We ended up deciding that because I was going to paint the entire desk, I would be fine with sizing up the handle some and filling old holes/making new holes. That just gave us so many more options and a lot more flexibility in our choices.
The woman helping us was even flipping through catalogs they had for options they didn't have on display. She found THE PERFECT handles! No joke. And they came in every finish under the sun! AND the price was fantastic and didn't break the bank.
Here is the new handle in all it's glory! (Along with the filled and sanded holes.) That's just sitting on one of the drawers - cleaned up, but sill with that weird faux yellow wood grain...
Up next, PAINT!
No comments:
Post a Comment