When I moved to San Francisco, I was faced with the task of furnishing my new home. I was renting a room in a house in the Sunset District. The house was lovely, and my room was spacious, but the neighborhood was awful. It consisted of homes, Chinese delis that proudly displayed skinned ducks in their windows, and cell phone stores. Tons of cell phone stores. I really can’t stress how great the quantity of cell phone retailers in that neighborhood is. What could these people possibly need with so many of them? You can almost hear that neighborhood hum at night. I digress…

The first piece of furniture that I purchased was an oak table. It was used, but in pretty good condition. It fit the bill perfectly, as I require more desktop space than the usual computer desk provides. I am, however, sick of looking at it. It has a thin lacquer on it, which means that it’s oak-colored with a sheen. I’m capable of sanding and painting it, but really don’t feel like doing so. I’m lazy. There, I said it.

My mental exploration into possible solutions to this problem has led me to tape. Specifically, gaff tape. I chose it for the following reasons:

1. It’s threaded, similar to duct tape, which makes it strong.

2. The adhesive, a high quality synthetic rubber, leaves no residue when the tape is removed. When I’m finally ready to sand and paint this oak beast, I’ll have no problems doing so.

3. It comes in many colors, including the drab olive green that matches my messenger bag!

The tools needed for this project are tape and your roommate’s toe-nail scissors (I recommend cleaning them before and after).

Below are some ‘before’ photos of the desk. If you look closely, you can see the scuffs and stains that it has sustained over the years. You may also notice that my room is a mess. I just moved in and am still unpacking. Give me a break.

The tape looks like this:

Partway through:

I finished within the hour, then placed some items on the desk for the ‘after’ shots:

I like the way that it turned out. The feel of the desktop is like that of canvas and not tacky at all. Perhaps I should do the rest of my furniture!

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 25th, 2007 at 1:18 am and is filed under It's All The Same Shit, Really., Posts With Photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.