Desk to Baking Station Repurpose

     My favorite room in the whole house has to be the kitchen.  The best part about kitchens is what comes out of them, but it’s always nice to have a nice one to work in.  I love my kitchen.  I love the big bay window with the deep sill that is going to (hopefully) become a tiny kitchen herb garden.  I love the white tile and black grout counter tops.  I love the fence panel on the wall that serves as my pot rack, and the strip of lace that is the window sash. 

     But there are a few things about my kitchen I am not too thrilled with.  The counters are too broken up.  The sections are a bit small for prep-work.  Not impossible to work with, but small.  They’re particularly troublesome when I need space to roll out something.  In the case of making tortillas, it goes so fast, that I need to be streamlined in my rolling, cooking, flipping, and stacking, and there just isn’t any stretch of counter top quite long enough to do that.  Also, rolling out very thin or sticky dough on tile is just not happening, and a cutting board that size or pastry board that size is more expensive than I currently can afford. 

     I happened to have an old desk that belonged to my Gramma.  I’m a terrible pack rat.  I’m getting better, but I will hang onto something I really don’t even like just because of who gave it to me, who it once belonged to, or the memories associated with it.  I also hate to throw anything away.  I think I get that from my Gramma who grew up during the Great Depression, was widowed during WWII, and remarried my granddad, a staff sergeant in the newly formed USAF.  She never threw anything away.  Everything could be given a new life as something else, mended, etc.  

     In the case of the desk, this is the desk my Gramma taught me to sew at.  It held her sewing machine and sewing oddments, pattern pieces, rag bag, button box, etc., for longer than I’ve been on this earth.  Granddad brought it to me along with a whole lot of other odds and ends shortly after Gramma passed away.  I have been using it ever since as a sewing station and office desk.  So this, at least, was a fully functional sentimental piece that had a place in my life. 

     Sentimentality aside, it was ugly.  So ugly.  It was that really unfortunate shade of maize/gold that seemed to be popular way back when.  I’ve seen kitchen appliances that color, it was one of the Pyrex colors, and it’s very vintage.  But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s ugly.  Also, the paint was flaking, the once shiny and “modern” but now dated bits of hardware were flaking and tarnished.  It fit just perfect in a bit of spare floor space at the end of the kitchen counter, though.  Once Pa put it up on some casters, it was also a very good work height. 

     It became a catch-all for odds and ends that had no home in the cupboards, and when it was time for baking something or making tortillas, I’d clear the top, roll it out into the middle of the kitchen floor, and use it like an island.  I have a pastry mat that I would put on it to roll stuff out on, but it’s a thin bit of sturdy plastic with no way to anchor, so it would slide around.  I’d cuss.  It’d slide some more.  I’d cuss some more.  You get the idea. 

     Both to encourage myself not to just pile stuff on top of it, and to make it more useful and attractive, I decided to make it pretty and turn it into an actual baking station.  One of the first things I had to do was decide what to surface it with.  We thought about getting a thin sheet of stone from one of the local stoneworks places, but I was kind of worried about the weight.  I thought about beeswax, because it’s pretty, smells nice, and is edible.  But I didn’t want to have to keep reconditioning it all the time and I wanted it to be nonporous enough to scrub if necessary. 

     I went to Wood Magazine and a few other places to try to find out what finishes would be food safe.  Turns out, any of them that dry to a hard finish are food-safe once they’re completely dry and cured.  Since polyurethane is non-porous, I figured I’d use that for my final finish.  I built up the finish 5 coats deep, so it should be smooth and durable for many-a, many-a. 

     I forgot to take a before picture until after I had already started taking the hardware off the desk and sanding the drawers.  This picture really doesn’t do the original color of this thing justice. 

     This color is called wisteria blue, by Behr, but I think they were a little confused.  I think it looks like purple, lavender if you want to be particular.  But either way, it is almost the exact color of some of the wisteria blossoms I’ve seen.  I have a wisteria just outside my kitchen window.  It’s one of my favorites, even though a lot of folks consider it a nuisance.  Wisteria and those little purple flowers that seem to pop up all over the place that, when we were little, we’d nibble the ends of the blossoms to get the nectar out; they’re the inspiration for the colors I’m bringing into my kitchen. 

     For the drawer pulls, instead of painting the old hardware, which wouldn’t have updated them in the slightest, I decided to make my own drawer pulls out of rope.  While you’re cutting, tape off the cut ends to keep them from fraying on you.  It makes them easier to cut and easier to tie later. 

I tied a knot in the center, then tied off each end after I'd pulled it through the screw-holes where the handles used to be.  

Centering the center knot is just a matter of loosening and tightening carefully to get it right where you want it after you’ve knotted the ends in place.

     The next thing was to truly replace my pastry mat I wanted to try to recreate it on top of the desk.  My mat has inches and centimeters measured off along the edges and circles for common diameter crusts.  Those dang circles were the hardest part of this whole adventure, and I almost gave up.  They are not centered or neat, and my handwriting is atrocious, but they’re on there, for better or worse.  Eh, they’re no worse than my pastries, though, if I’m honest.  I can’t roll out a round pie crust or tortilla to save my life.  They’re all a bit wonky, so I reckon wonky circles ain’t no thing. 

     I also wanted to put some of my favorite recipes on the top that require rolling out.  I wanted to put my bread recipe on there, too, but I figured I’d better just stick with short and sweet.  A bread recipe comprehensive enough to be thorough would be crowded.

 

     I didn’t take pictures of the clear coating phase.  I figured it was a little irrelevant and unnecessary, since it’s still going to look the same, just shiny.  It took forever and stunk up the house something fierce, but fortunately we had a good stretch of lovely weather where I could keep the windows open all day. It takes about 3-4 hours between coats, and I had to do five coats, so that was a multi-day job, but the rest of the sanding, painting, knotting, and doodling was all completed in a single afternoon.  On a sunny day in Texas you can quite literally watch the paint dry. 

     And there it is.  I think it looks lovely.  I can stash my bread pans, pie plates, cookie cutters, rolling pins, and other baking specific tools in the drawers; have a nice smooth place to work; and it’s mobile!  It also complements my fridge’s makeover.  I’ll share that with you a bit later.  I’m still tweaking it and have learned a few lessons along the way with that particular project. 

     Go make something beautiful, and share it in the comments! I love seeing how people redo their old things into something new.  It gives me ideas and honey-dos!