Refinishing a $40 mid century modern desk

Clear coat time! Lacquer is the ideal finish for MCM pieces, and how virtually all of them were originally done. The fumes are some Serious Shit, however, and getting a good build with aerosol lacquer is expensive and and hard. ("Brushing lacquer" is a lie, don't fall for it.) The only other option for pieces that will be seeing frequent use is polyurethane, IMO. Oil-based poly looks best and has a super long drying time, which is good because you have a decent window to correct mistakes, but bad because every piece of dust or hair that drifts by the piece for 18 hours after application will become permanently embedded in the finish. Water-based poly can look a little plastic-y, but it dries a lot faster and has the added benefit of being thick enough to be sprayed out of most cheap paint sprayers on a very low setting. If you want to go OB, I've had great results from the $40 Wagner finish sprayer. Mine tragically broke halfway through this project, though, so after fucking up most of the desk multiple times and having to re-strip and start over twice, I switched to WB and my regular $100 Wagner paint sprayer.