What 30 minutes and $5 will get you...

Earl's old kitchen has a few good points and a lot of things that need changing out.  It's pretty spacious, which is great, and there's decent storage.  The laundry room is separate, which I love --- our previous house had a "laundry closet" in the kitchen, which I wasn't a big fan of.  Earl's kitchen has a flat top stove, which, while not gas, is much preferred to electric eyes by this cook.  There's a nice eating area with a picture window, and there's a built-in desk.

While I hate the wallpaper and I'm not crazy about the dark-stained cabinets in Earl's Old Kitchen, I LOVE the countertops.  Solid-surface, black granite with backsplash.  Pretty!

Unfortunately, Earl either ran out of materials, money, or time when doing the countertops, and he left the desk in the old yellowed laminate.  Not pretty.  And not matchy.  Yuck.

I poked around for several months, trying to figure out what to do about this.  I didn't want to hire someone to custom cut the materials and pay to have them install just the desk piece.  I wasn't confident in my ability to do this work myself, either.  So, I looked at other options.  I considered contact paper but after literally months of searching, I couldn't find anything that matched our counters.  Finally, it occurred to me...why not just paint it?

Enter Rustoleum High-Gloss Black (2 coats) plus two coats of clear sealant.

This picture was taken before I applied the sealant.  Is it perfect?  No.  But it's a thousand times better than it was, and rather than sticking out like a sore thumb, it blends in much better with the rest of the kitchen for now. 

$5 and 30 minutes well spent.