I was taking out the trash one afternoon, and I saw a desk that was set off to the side that needed some TLC. First I was going to put it outside as a garden desk for all the new plants, but as I continued, that idea changed. I knew that it had to be sanded down a good amount because of the stain color, so I went out and got a power sander; there was no way I wanted to do all that by hand. The noise the sanding created, was mind numbing, I thought it could be heard throughout the whole town. haha
I took off the laminate that was on top, and sanded the whole desk and drawers. After it was all sanded down, I took some pictures and used Photoshop to play with some stain colors. That really helped me get an idea because I have a good selection of stains now that Home Depot put the Minwax on the discontinued list. I bought as many as I could because Minwax is the primary stain I use and didn't want to ruin all that sanding.
I decided that the handles would look better polished instead of the fake gold. I used a Dremel to polish all the hardware and they came out a nice chrome, which I thought would look really good on the darker drawers. I stained the desk with Golden Oak, and the drawers Ebony.