Desk Refinishing Project

Ever had one of those cheap desks where the surface rubs off over time? A thin layer of paint over that dreaded pressboard? Which is really more of a word for a bucket of sawdust and a bottle of glue thrown in a mold because we are too cheap to use anything that will actually hold up over time. Well I did. Years ago I bought a seemingly nice looking corner desk for all my computer stuff. Over the years however, the surface simply rubbed off. Worse, whenever I happened to set a cup of water or something on it the moisture would soak into the pressboard and cause that raised bump effect that I am sure has a fancy name I don't know. So, for no apparent reason, after years of putting up with it I had finally had it and needed to do something about it. Formica I thought! Well there is a material that should not only be waterproof but hold up to the apparently large amount of wear my desk gets.

First things first, find some Formica with a decent color and pattern. Trickier said than done though I tell you. I headed down to the local Home Depot to start my search. Turns out either Home Depot is retarded (sorry Home Depot we still love you) or the guy putting up the price tags was or I am too stupid to read. The sign seemed to state that uninstalled laminate countertop material was $13 to $16 a square foot. Umm...at that price I could buy myself a whole new desk made of solid wood...so that was a definite no. I then headed down to the redneck flooring/countertop store  located way out in the middle of nowhere. This seemed an appropriate place to find something suitable. After browsing through their remnant section for far too long I managed to stumble across a lovely piece of black Formica with a very subtle sort of white/grey speckle to it. At 29" by 12' this piece was just the right size for the job as well! The guy that went with us said "everything back here is $1 a square foot." Awesome! I thought. that sure beats Home Depot's $13. After saying that I would like it, the guy measured it and said "We'll just call that 2 by 12 feet. $24?" That right there saved me about $6 with his easy to calculate square footage guess. So I agreed and we went to purchase it. Now, naturally, and I promise you this wasn't planned, I had a wallet full of $20 bills and that was pretty much it. The guy must have noticed and said to me "You have a 20? That's close enough." Nice! So that was most definitely a great start to an otherwise annoying project. The last step was to go and buy some contact cement and a scoring knife from Lowe's. I know, I'm a traitor but it was closer and they actually had what I needed.

The Layout

The next step was to take apart the desk and lay out all the pieces on the sheet of Formica in order to cut them. This, as it would turn out, would be THE most troublesome and downright frustrating part of the project. Thinking I had more than enough material, I cut off a piece from the end to do some practice with. That right there was a very big mistake. Apparently I had made a massive error in my calculations. When doing the square foot calculating, I had made replicas of the 3 desk pieces on my computer and fit them together in the most material saving way. The problem, however, is  that I had taken and rotated the two side pieces and fit them together vs. mirroring them like I was supposed to do...as seen below.

This, as you can see, practically doubled the amount of material I needed. That in itself wasn't so terrible as I had way more than enough for those two pieces but I still needed the rectangular piece for the center section of the desk. So I went to work cleaning off my desk and taking it apart. This left me with the 3 pieces to lay out on the material in the best way possible given the new...developments. I must have spent an hour or two shuffling those pieces  around trying as hard as possible to get them all to fit, but in the end it just couldn't be done. I was seriously one inch short...an inch! Yeah, that made me mad but I decided to make due with what I had anyways. In the end I had to patch a small corner in the back that nobody ever sees anyway. It worked better than I thought so all is good. Make sure you allow at least ¼ of an inch on all sides of your piece for trimming off later with a router. This will ensure you have a nice and clean edge.

This is the giant SD card! Actually it is the piece that I didn't have quiet enough material for and had to patch the corner. I swear it looks just like an SD card though...the proportions almost look right even.

The Prep

Now, as we all know, prep is the most important step in any project. In this case that meant  sanding. A lot of sanding. Sanding paint off of wood actually...which lungs tend to dislike. So if ever you plan on doing something similar to this, do what I did and wear a mask. You will be happy you did, trust me. So, out to the shop I took the pieces of my desk to be sanded to perfection. This was actually very important because, as I stated before, the desk was anything but smooth after all the water spilling incidents and whatnot that had raised the grain all over. Originally I had just intended to sand the whole surface lightly paying extra attention to the bumpy spots to ensure a nice flat surface for the Formica to glue to. But...as we all know, things rarely go according to  plan...especially when I am involved. Anyway, I started to sand down the rough spots and realized "Hey! This stuff comes off the top way easier than it should!" The rough spots had been sanded all the way down to the original flat and smooth pressboard surface. Then, the spots sanded down to the wood began to include the area surrounding the once bumpy spots...and then turned into half the surface of the desk...and before I knew it, all the paint had been sanded off leaving me with a pretty and very flat surface on which to glue my Formica. As you can imagine, this created massive amounts of dust, especially since I ended up using a belt sander. Everything in the shop, myself included, was covered in a thick layer of probably toxic paint and wood dust. Oh well, all for the glory of a nice looking cheap desk right? Almost done, but there was one more thing that needed to be done. As we all know, Formica is 3 dimensional…this is to say it is 1/16 of an inch thick. If glued on top of my desk the front edge would be raised, sharp and potentially hazardous. To fix this I drew a nice line all the way along the front of the pieces set back 1/8 of an inch, took a regular metal file, and tapered/rounded the front edge down. This beveled edge nearly matches the curve of the front finished edge of the desk making for a nice smooth transition between the two. That is a very good thing.

On a side note, the front edge needed to be sanded by hand to avoid the belt sander taking off the finish of the front rounded edge. And be careful to keep the belt sander level to avoid strange grooves being sanded into the wood…oops. After all the sanding was done and the pieces were cleaned off it was time to glue the Formica to the desk!

The Assembly

Now that all the prep work was done it was time for the gluing! Contact cement is the glue required for this job. As the name implies, you put it on both pieces, let it dry, and then stick them together. On contact it forms an unnaturally strong bond. So, not having ever done this before, I called my uncle and asked if he might lend me a little assistance. Fortunately he was able to come over and we went to work rolling on the glue on the pieces.

Now, seriously, for the love of brain cells…either do this outside on a nice day or make sure your shop is well ventilated because that stuff smells horrible. Thinking I was fine I kept on working, but as soon as I tried to walk around it occurred to me that I was on the verge of passing out. So yeah, be careful and not stupid like I was.

That aside, the glue went on and we went to work sticking the pieces together. The process for this is to lay some wooden dowels or small strips of wood across the surface of the thing being glued to. Then lay the Formica on top, line up the front edge and stick it. Slowly pull out the wooden sticks and press the pieces together working your way towards the back. Once you have it stuck take something big and round androll over the entire surface putting as much pressure on it as you can. You can actually buy tools for this but a rolling pin or something similar will work. This helps to stick them together more and force out any air bubbles that may have gotten stuck underneath.

Once we had all the pieces glued it was time to finish the edges. For this all we needed to do was run the router along the edges a few times to remove that extra material. Quick and easy. There was of course a little more filing that needed to be done on the edges to give them an ever so slight bevel to keep them from being sharp and some paint thinner rubbing to remove the excess glue. After all that was done, I took it inside, put it back together, and got it all cluttered again. And there you have it! A desk resurfaced and reassembled all in one day! Not bad if I do say so myself.

Disclaimer – The things done and written about on this page are fairly safe and can lead to a better looking home. Just because it is written here and has a disclaimer does not mean it shouldn’t be done. We strongly recommend any sort of action similar to this that may potentially lead to impressed friends, improved carpentry skills, and self confidence. You will enjoy it, so go do it. Randomland says you should. Oh…and power tools are dangerous and so are fumes so really, do be careful. I said fairly safe not idiot proof.