i want to do it myself

I am the pickiest person I know. Not about food (Good lord, no!), but about “look”. It’s the curse of the creative: I’m always designing things in my head that don’t exist, and that I have neither the resources nor the time to make. But sometimes…sometimes I actually make it. Me and the term “Do It Yourself” have a love/hate relationship. In the last few weeks I’ve focused on the “love” part of that, and built myself a desk. Ok. I helped David and my dad build my dream desk.

We have this long skinny “half room” in the basement with built-in bookshelves on one wall and a whole lot of empty space on the rest.

It’s a perfect little office nook, and I am so ready to trade in my laptop and all the time I’ve spent working from the couch in for a desktop and a Get Stuff Done station where I can go and…ya know…get stuff done. I want David and I to both be able to work in this space, and to occasionally be able to spread out bigger sewing and craft projects someplace besides the kitchen table. So I dreamed up this big, solid table with a reclaimed-looking top and sleek modern legs, grabbing inspiration from here (top), here (legs & length) and here (stain).

I’d like to say “here’s the step by step tutorial on this sucker” but we kind of hacked it together, and there’s just not all that much to it. We bought 3 “2×10″s (construction grade) and had them cut to my ridiculously long length of 9′ by a nice guy at Home Depot. Then we got 5 shorter, “1×4″s to screw into the bottom crosswise to hold it all together. We David, Dad and my brother sanded. And sanded. And sanded a little more. Then some more. And they all complained that the electric sander had put their hand to sleep. (“Hey guys, at least it’s electric and you’re not doing this with a tiny sheet of paper,” I said from my chair where I was watching and sipping lemonade or something.)


After all the sanding, we screwed the supports to the bottom of the boards, pre-stained, stained, and covered with a few coats of polyurethane. Finally, we screwed in the legs, which some friends picked up from IKEA during their spring break trip, and Bam! Desk = done. Just the way I like it.


At the beginning of all this, my poor dad was all “Maybe we should just go to a cabinet shop and have them make this for you” and I was all “…sounds expensive…” and I had to explain to him that I really wanted to make it myself, and I wanted it to look original and not look like any old desk you can buy at a furniture store. So he gave in and helped me make a game plan and I’m so thankful that he was willing to help. I do not have the mind that can figure out if my plan will physically work and what it will take. But I’m also really glad I stuck to my idea and tried to make it work, because I love the result and I’m proud of what we made. More pics will come as soon as I get around to sprucing this office up and making it say “I’m fun! Work is fun! It’s fun to work here!”

Oh yeah! We also painted the basement…but the blog’s not quite ready for that jelly.