Quick fix for a clean space

Back when I was painting my desk there was one part I didn't tackle, the top. I did some research and it seemed like I was going to have to do a lot of sanding, several coats of paint and then several coats of some sort of clear coat to seal the whole thing, all with copious amounts of drying time inbetween. This would mean having my desk out of commission for at least a few days but probably closer to a week. So I put it off. And continued to procrastinate, all while casually thinking in the back of my head, that it would be awesome if there was another option. And then it came to me when I was cutting out circles for my hallway, contact paper. 

As you can see in the above picture, the top of my desk was big piece of old counter top. Very sturdy and strong but it was roughly in the band-aid color family, and had become pretty dingy from years of use/abuse. There were all sorts of odd stains and such. I sanded the whole thing vigorously and cleaned it before applying the contact paper.

The whole process was fairly easy. I carried the white paint up over the edge of the desktop and then I trimmed the contact paper down to approximately the right length for the desk. Then I peeled the backing off of one side and lined it up with the edge and smoothed out the air bubbles as I moved along the length of the desk. I did a full sheet at the front of the desktop so that I would have the seam in the back. Then I cut down the second piece to a narrower width and repeated the same process. I had to do some creative patchwork around the lamp base and my little outlet port but the business of the pattern made it work quite well.

 
























I held off writing about this for a while because I wanted to see how well it wore with regular use. I often drag my computer and sewing machine around to various parts of the work space, this weekend I did a bunch of printing. I wanted to see if the surface could be cleaned easily and avoided looking gross and beat up like the original did. So far it has held up beautifully. I'm a little concerned that this pattern is too much for a workspace, but I am going to try it out for a while. The only cost was the $5 roll of contact paper and it took less than an hour so I'm thinking when it eventually starts to look worn, I can easily replace with something else fun. Perhaps faux marble?

Funnily it hardly looks different from straight on, especially with the glare from the window reflecting off of it, but it makes all the difference to me while I am sitting there working. Though it is easy to loose my pins in the pattern! Will have to be careful f that I guess.