DIY – Life With Purpose (And Other Things)

Home Goods: One of my favorite places in the world. There’s so many things to find there and I love that it’s ever changing. The bad this is, though, it’s ever changing so if you see something you like and think you’ll come back tomorrow to get it….nah. I’ve made that mistake more than once in my life. I still regret every single time.

As we begin cultivating furniture and decor for our adult home (no more mismatched plates and hand me down furniture!), I’m always on the look out for the best deals. One of my strengths is research–I do it fast and I do it efficiently. I’ve been scouring sites for the best office desk for months: Wayfair, Target, Ikea, Overstock, World Market but nothing seemed to fit my vision in my mind which I couldn’t even describe. I knew I would just know when I saw it. I was sure I was going to find it at Home Goods but, unless you’re there every day watching the new merchandise come in, there’s no way of knowing what they have.

But then the day came. The sweet, sweet day when I found MY desk. In a HomeGoods somewhere in Long Island we don’t even go to and I didn’t know existed in the mall we were in. My husband actually found the store and took me out of Macy’s Backstage (another gem I’ve discovered) and dragged me over in an effort to be sweet but also a little masochistic because he hates shopping with me. He hates that I flutter around and get distracted by things and that everything is all over the place in that store. And I don’t know if he knows, but I play a game of distract A.J. from his hatred by going “Oh, that chair looks comfy. Why don’t you sit in it.” and he sits until he gets bored of the chair and then I go “Oh wait, I found a chair you’re gonna love! Go sit over there and test it for me!”.

As I walked around I passed a desk and thought “hmm, maybe that’s it”. So I pulled the chair out and opened the drawers and I realized YUP THAT’S MY DAMN DESK! Now, sometimes I have a bad habit of falling in love with beautiful things that are out of my price range and sometimes HomeGoods throws you for a loop like that: $699 for this small sofa?! What are you talking about HomeGoods, I thought we were friends!

This desk was perfect and only priced at $199! Unheard of for a wood desk. I was expecting to pay at least $250 from one of those other sites AND have to build it myself which is so tedious and obnoxious at this point in my life. I’m not 25 anymore, I don’t have time to build things! The top of the desk had some scratches but I figured that just gave it character and the store was nice enough to give me 10% off for the damage.

So I brought my beautiful baby home and realized, I have mismatched old desk organizers and I wanted new ones. Since we’re not rich, I decided it was worth a try to spray paint what I had and see what happened so that everything would match. I wiped everything down with a damn paper towel to clean off the dust and lay them out on a tarp in the yard. It was a super

My stuff. It was in great condition just didn’t pop so why spend money on buying new things?

windy day but it was the only day I had. I tried using one of those Spray Paint guns that claim to be easier than holding down the button on the can. I followed the instructions and tried slipping it onto the can thinking I was doing something wrong so I pushed harder until it went passed the can and scraped my hand and drew lots of blood. I’m definitely going to have a scar there and was no so happy that this thing didn’t even fit a standard can of spray paint as it claimed. So annoyed.

The worst. Anyone have tips or tricks for using this? You can see the scab on the bottom of my pointer finger by the knuckle. So much bleeding.

I used the KRYLON brand in hammered gold and started spraying. Half the spray flew away in the wind but it started coating the items without a problem. I did a coat, waited 15 minutes then did another one. The next day I checked over the items to see any spots that I missed and gave it another coat of spray. I’m so happy with how it turned out and I love that everything now matches on my desk. I added my vase and flowers from Magnolia Market in Waco and now I have an adult desk to do all my adult things on like pay bills and organize paperwork. And instead of going out and buying new stuff (which is sooo expensive by the way. I did the research.) for about $8 and a few hours of dry time, I had things that looked like new!