Sunday, May 3, 2009

Almost furnished

Ken rescued this dear little desk from a dumpster about 3 years ago. Since then, it's lived in the dining room, then the study - just waiting to be re-finished. This is the desk where I finished my dissertation, and have usually posted to this blog. It's a great, sturdy, solid little bugger with good proportion. I temporarily replaced the round knobs with these unfinished pyramid oak ones we had kicking around - not very visually satisfying.

This weekend the weather was decent and I was wanting to get the desk finished up and back in the study, so I can have my little workstation all ready for summer. So, I sanded it clean (it's a factory-type piece, not a handmade, Stickley-type piece, so I decided it was OK to go at it). The old chipped urethane (?) came flying right off.


Today I finished sanding, smoothed it down, and hit it with some "Early American" stain. I wanted a medium-oaky color; I'm sure this desk is maple, and often the "Red Oak" stain will make wood that's not oak look too pink. Early American was perfect - just what I wanted. The desk looks pretty good. You can still see where some A-hole smashed their chair into the knee-hole repeatedly, but it's not so obvious. I'll try to be more careful than the previous owner.

Then I starting looking at the knobs - pyramid just wasn't right. I hopped on the ol' internet to see what Gus Stickley would have done - and he (and brothers L & JG) most often used round wood knobs, or sometimes pulls, on these desks. Unbelievably, I remembered where I had put the knobs I took off the desk, sanded them up, and we'll be ready for some coats of oil tomorrow after work.
Also, Ed & I spent a good bit of time surveying the garden and the weed situation. (Already!)
The good news is that flowers are starting to pop up everywhere. We should have lilacs next week, and one of my all-time favorites - these little white violets that I dug out of the lawn our first summer - are blooming all over.

4 comments:

Neighmond said...

What will you do with the pyramidal ones? How big are they?

sarah said...

Hey Neigh - the knobs are not vintage - they were some I had on hand from Lee Valley. They have a whole selection, at:
http://www.leevalley.com/hardware/page.aspx?c=2&p=46395&cat=3,46742,44010

They're inexpensive and so useful, so I've just ordered a handful of them and keep them in my hardware bin, thinking they'll come in handy.

Jason said...

That's nice work!

Neighmond said...

Thanks! That was just what I needed.