We’re switching rooms around here and TheMisterT’s home office is moving from the guest room to the library (which is kind of becoming the guest room, too). He had been using a small secretary as a desk and it wasn’t super great for him, so when he moved into the library we set up a folding table. Also not great, but mostly for aesthetic reasons, so I set out to find a vintage/antique/used wood desk. It needed to be w/in a certain size range, be not super elaborate nor sleekly modern and also not cost an arm and a leg. Mostly, we suspected we’d get a much better piece of furniture for our dollar if it were old and possibly in need of refinishing rather than bought new.
Before:
Finally, I found this on Facebook Marketplace for $45! Solid wood and exactly the size we were hoping for! It just needed to be sanded down and refinished. It even had a drawer, which TheMisterT didn’t care about, but I did.
Unlike a lot of the country, we have been having a ridiculously (and dangerously) mild winter, so I was able to do all the power sanding outside over the course of a few couple-hour sessions. It was cold (20F/-6.6C),
but dry and sunny. Oddly, Vivienne is not at all upset by the sander’s racket and she LOVES to be outside. So she would stop by when I was switching out sandpaper and we would have a fun break.
I had to move inside the house to stain and wax it, which I did in our over-sized downstairs bathroom which has a heat source and ventilation. I forgot to take pics!
Another thing I did was move the support plank from the center to the back. I removed to finish sanding and to do the staining and waxing. It can be a shelf for tech stuff or other storage as well as add rigidity to the desk, but is out of the way of TheMisterT’s long legs.
I painting the inside of the drawer with TheMisterT’s favorite color. I love a little secret surprise like this. I also added leveling feet to the desk legs.
There is still A LOT of work to do moving around the contents of this room with the other, replacing some furniture, painting, moving art around, etc. That apothecary on the left was from my great-grandparent’s hardware store and I hope to build a new case for it with legs and move it into my craft room (the old guest room).
