The Desk

I've been looking forward to writing this post for over a year. Last summer Mandi stumbled across an antique church desk during one of her trips to Goodwill. It took a little convincing, but she finally talked me into buying it for $40. The plan was to refinish it and put it in my home office. This was a great project to keep me busy while I was unemployed last summer/fall. I started by stripping the old finish and sanding it smooth. I decided to use a combo stain/polyurethane to save a few steps. I wasn't terribly excited about the original handles (simple wood handles that were kind of bulky), so I planned to find new antique handles. This proved to me more difficult than I expected. We checked all of the local antique stores and shows for something that fit the style of the desk, but we didn't have any luck. I was hoping to find something that would fit in the original holes, but that really wasn't a reality. I finally found some brass handles from the same dealer who had the ottoman legs at the Scott Antique Market. They weren't the same size as the original handles, so I had to figure out how to fill the old holes. Luckily the guy also had something called QuikWood that seemed like it would be pretty easy to use. This is where the story takes a familiar turn. Since the desk weighs about a ton (okay, maybe a bit of an exaggeration), we weren't able to move it from the basement to the second floor on our own. We were finally able to move it when Mandi's mom and Neal stopped on their way home from Florida. Neal and I got the desk up to the second floor and this is where it got ugly. Because of the way the door to my office was configured we couldn't get the desk through the door without either taking off the door frame or taking the top off the desk. I wasn't too thrilled about dismantling a rental house, so we tried taking the top off. Sadly, antique desks aren't  built to be taken apart and we couldn't get the top off without damaging the desk. So back down the stairs we went. The desk sat in the front room of the house until we moved to Florida. Now that the desk has a home I felt it was time to finish the drawers. Plus I couldn't unpack the stuff that goes into it until I finished the drawers. I still need to find a marker to match the wood filler to the new finish, but otherwise the desk is finally finished.

After stripping the original finish (I neglected to take a before picture)

The staining process

Finished staining. I love the pullout writing surface.



Finished desk in its new home

My favorite feature: the old typewriter cabinet makes a great home for the printer

A note from the church secretary

 

 

The ottoman (finally) lives!

We started a project about a year ago to build a new ottoman for the living room. We had been using a small leather-like ottoman from Target that was really small and didn't exactly work with our couches. Mandi had a great idea to use a pallet to build our own ottoman. Sadly, pallets aren't as easy to work with as Pinterest would make you think. The first problem with the pallet showed itself when I tried to reinforce the corners so I could attach the legs. Let's just say the neighbors heard lots of swearing from me that day. The bigger problem was the shape of the pallet. It wasn't square and it was just long enough that we would have to sew together two pieces of fabric to cover it. We decided to scrap the pallet idea and start from scratch. The new frame is a box made from 2x6s with a cross piece from one of the pallets. After we built the box we added some plywood, some 2" foam, some cotton batting, and the fabric. And then it sat. And sat some more. We didn't have any legs for it. When we finally found some legs at the Scott Antique Market we didn't know how to attach them. The legs had a piece on top that is meant to be attached to the inside of the box, but our corner was too thick and the leg would be inset too far. So the legless ottoman and the unattached legs sat there. I had an idea about how to attach the legs, but I was worried it wouldn't work and I would ruin the legs in the process. Basically the plan was to cut off the piece on top and then attach a new piece inside the corner part of the leg that would attach to the ottoman (see picture below). To make an already long story short, I finally bit the bullet yesterday and went to work on modifying the legs and attaching them to the ottoman. I was pretty excited that it went as planned. And then I stood the ottoman on its new legs and put it by the couches. My heart sank. Even though we measured and thought we knew how tall we wanted it to be, we were wrong. It ended up being taller than the couch so when you put your feet on it they are actually elevated. So now we're back to the drawing board for the legs. But it looks nice.

The finished ottoman

Wrapping the frame with cotton batting

The frame wrapped in batting

Time to upholster!

Who knew we had upholstery skills?

The leg assembly 

Boxes, Boxes, Everywhere Boxes

It's been just over a week since I joined Mandi in our new home and we're surrounded by boxes. One of the challenges for this move is that we moved into a house about half the size of our last house, so we've had to think creatively about how to fit things into the house. We're also being pretty cutthroat about what actually makes it into the house. This is definitely an opportunity for us to clear out some of the clutter in our lives and simplify a bit. Unpacking has been a little slow-going, but we're making progress. We have the kitchen unpacked and we can finally cook again. We were both getting sick of eating out so much, even though it did give us an excuse to try some restaurants in Port St. Lucie. Hopefully as we get more settled we'll have more time to post some updates about our adventures in Port St. Lucie.