Refurbishing fun

My husband recently started a photography business and his equipment was taking over our house! So we decided to turn our "catch all" room next to our bedroom into his office. We got some fun shelves from IKEA, a bookshelf from a local secondhand store (Kalamazoo Kitty kzookitty.com), and a desk and chair off of craigslist. I wanted to make my hub a cool, manly desk for his photography stuff and his baby aka the iMac. The desk we got was a great size with lots of drawers which is what he wanted. But it was pretty scratched up and well-loved as the old owners would say:-). I look at some design blogs and was noticing people doing some neat things with spray paint, so I let my creative side fly! I knew I wanted something kind of metallic looking, which terrified Josh, but he trusted me and let me go at it.
Here is a pic after the sanding was done:

I then put on 2 coats of Kilz white primer:

Then did 3 coats of silver spray paint. This is a pic after the first 2 coats:

My husband was freaking out at this point. After the third coat of silver spray paint, I had turned his desk into a version of the Tin Man from wizard of oz. This was not what I had envisioned. So I sanded down the edges and basically all over to take away some of the bright "silveriness."  Then I applied ebony stain all over. I painted on the stain with a sponge brush and then wiped off after about 30 seconds. On a couple of the corners and edges, I let the stain sit for the night. Then sanded some more where it was too black. It was still a bit silvery, so I sanded over the whole thing one more time (all sanding was done by hand, not with a machine). I then added new hardware that I found at Lowe's and put on a coat of Minwax clear gloss polyurethane. 
Here is the finished product:

Thankfully, he loves it! It's nice and smooth, fits all his stuff, and looks fairly manly:-). I had a ton of fun doing it, would love to refinish more furniture, but with a 2 and 3 year old, most work is done between 9pm and 12am. Momma needs to sleep!  I wanted to share in case any of you have the itch to refinish furniture but are fearful...don't be! I am not "artsy" in nature, I just decided to go for it, looked at some blogs, and had a good time. Plus I was only out about $50 bucks if it didn't work! So be courageous and be creative!!