Its where it all started.
A piece of furniture left behind in a garage in a house we bought in Eatonia. My souse started cleaning out the garage after we moved the last of the moving boxes back into the house. He hauled out an old teller desk. It was a raggedy solid desk with a rotted bottom, missing pieces in the top and oil stains from being in the garage. It was “junk” destined for the landfill. That was until I walked by the trailer, stopped and stared at the desk. It crossed my mind on how nice this would have looked sitting in a office sometime in the past. How sad that it was in this state. A few hours later I told my spouse to haul it off the trailer, I wanted to fix it. I got a look and he said it was junk. I told him I know but just wait. He rolled his eyes and shrugged and hauled it off the trailer. I did a little happy dance.
Desk Before
As you can see the bottom was pretty degraded. The wood supports were dry and broken and it was missing pieces. So my first task was to give it a solid base to stand on. When we moved in to the house we pulled out 8 solid wood spindles that were by our front door. They were 8 ft tall and the workmanship was awesome so we held onto them. They were perfect for legs. So I cut off all the broken wood and rooted pieces from the bottom and attached 4 of the 5 inch thick oak spindles as legs. At this point I did another happy dance, i could see my vision.
Now to tackle the top. That took some thinking. There was a giant oil stain covering the centre of the top, and on the bottom corner of the left side along the bottom drawer. That took a bunch of scrubbing with TSP and sanding. It was still visible though. Easy enough fix. Dark wood stain! Before the stain could be applied though I had to cut a piece of oak to go along the back where it was missing a piece of wood. My best guess is there used to be a shelf that came up the back of the desk. Putting a new piece of wood along side old wood can pose issues in the staining process. Old wood sucks in the stain way darker than new wood does. To offset that difference I coated all the old wood with wood conditioner to offset the moisture difference.
I tackled the staining next. Chose a lovely dark red tinted wood stain. Something with dark stain on old pieces really make the wood grain pop. Its my favourite. I coated the desk in a polyurethane to protect the surface against the rough and tumble of family life. I had to pull out my happy dance again.
Desk After
Now the next issue that posed itself after completion was what to do with it. I loved it and even my sceptical spouse thought it turned out amazing. The problem was this desk is big. My husband said we didn’t have room for it but there was no way I was selling it. So while he was at work I rearranged the living room moved a couch down stairs and found a spot for it in my living room. He was quite surprised when he got home! He laughed and responded “only you would get rid of a couch to put a desk in” (hey it was only 1 of 2 couches) It has been the focal piece in my living room for the past 3 years. It just goes to show you that one persons trash really is another treasure. With a little love and vision everything is beautiful. So of course I did a little happy dance again
