The start of the new desk

I bought this desk about 9 years ago from Staples.  In the store it didn't seem so big!  We got it home to the rental apartment and it took up half our living room! Grandpa had gave all us grandchildren our inheritance (minus what we may have owed him and never repaid (let's just say Karrie didn't get a full amount, ha!)) and I wanted a desk for our new-to-us computer (you know, so I could play Solitaire in comfort....).  I also bought the chair at the same time.  As you can see, it's lived a rough life, but it still holds me and doesn't dump me on the floor or anything, so I just keep duct taping the ripped parts!  Looking back now, I'm not sure what I loved about the desk.  I've been craving desk drawers with a filing cabinet and one big flat open surface.  You probably can't tell, but I even took off the top shelf piece on the desk to make more room for my super tall, all powerful, pretty, lit up tower.

Back in October, we brought home a super ugly, seen better days, door from my Dad's place.  It was actually the door off of the very first addition we ever had on our trailer.  It was also green on one side, brown on the other, and chippy and dirty all over.  It's sat in the basement ever since we brought it home, but this last weekend we decided to head out to my Dad's and get going on my new desk.

The plan was to scavenge any usable parts off of the old desk for the new one.  The old one had been moved more times than the press board was up to, so I decided to re-use parts off of it and will probably end up tossing the rest of it.  First up, stealing the legs off of it.

Let's ignore the dust, okay?  The plan was to take the metal legs off of this one, go to Dad's, cut them down, re-weld them, re-paint them, and attach to the new top.  I don't know if you can see them or not, but the legs had holes near the top of them to run your power cords through, to keep your desktop neat and tidy.  (It also at one point had a power bar mounted underneath the top shelf to help with the cord situation.  Maybe that's what drew me to it?  I don't know.  Distracted by organization and technology! Ha!)

We soon discovered one little issue with those cord holes.  I remember sitting at my desk and noticing one of the little kids standing near by and sort of giggling while toys were slowly disappearing from their hands.  Children always have a way of figuring these things out...

Can you see?  Over the years, even though I told them to stop, they had been slowly filling up the leg with anything that would fit!  Since both the top and bottom of the legs were sealed, I could never get the stuff out.  I had actually totally forgotten that they used to do that until the leg was off and something was moving around in there. 

Here's their collection over the years.....

A whole lot of chips (ew), a half melted chocolate bar (double ew, apparently someone didn't like the taste of it, and I can tell you I didn't like the feel of it either!!), crayons, wooden blocks, a whole package of Halls Centres(!), a bouncy ball, a car (which Blade promptly reclaimed, even though you know it was him who put it down there to begin with!!), and even poor Dora ended up in the tube.   There was actually two more blue blocks in there too, that I just couldn't seem to convince to come out.  Mmmmm... half a Cheeto anyone?

Storm's New Desk

A while back, (before Halloween decorating madness took over the house!), I rearranged Storm's room.  She's really been wanting a desk in there, but I wasn't sure how I was going to get one in without taking something out or stacking furniture.  I even went so far as to measure her shelf unit(?) that was in there already so I could get a desk and stack it on top, sort of buffet style.

Then I eyed up the boy's desk.

They really didn't end up using it for much after I got rid of the old computer that was on top of it (which they also didn't use much).  Blade had his toys in the drawers and it was holding their fish tanks.  That's about it.

One issue.  It was black.  I love black furniture.  I really do.  But Storm's room is white.  (How did that happen?! I don't know.) 

So I decided I'd need to paint it.  The paint job was long overdue anyways, for a desk that has been around for forever. 

And then came Halloween Madness. 

And so it sat.  And sat.  And got used in the decoration and planning of the kids Halloween party.

You can see it in the background here.  It had two 2x4's screwed onto the back of it and covered with our old skeleton couch cover to make a entrance way for the kids to go through and block off part of the sitting room where the games would be played.

Anyways, my long winded point  is, that I finally got it painted and totally done and in her room!

Here are some pics.

Looks better already.

My original plan was to just paint the desk and leave the drawers black.  But then I looked at them closer.  Ugh.  So I thought I'd cover them with paper, which was great but I didn't like the black edges you would still see, and I didn't want to wrap the paper around.  So I painted the edges.

I raided Storm's big book of paper and found some that would go with her wall color.  Of course, there was only 4 pages of each design in that book.  Of course.  So after some minor indecision I picked out two co-ordinating papers.   As you can see, I didn't even bother to paint inside the big drawer. 

I was a little annoyed at the one drawer (the first one I did, of course) that it was wrinkly and bubbly.  Mod Podge and I are still not the best of friends.  I just decided not to stress over it. The desk was ancient, it was going to be okay that it wasn't perfect, Storm would never care, and I wouldn't have to look at it every day. (Can you hear me chanting that to myself?!?!)

I decided I had better put a plexi-glass top on it as this is the child who loves her Sharpies.

To quote Toy Story 2:  She's an artist.

 

So since I had a whole clean white top to cover, I thought I'd grab some left over paper and her poster all about Storm Riyan Sweet to go on top of it.

Ain't it sweet!

I love, love, love this desk now.  And so does she.


She's in heaven.....the top drawer is full of Sharpies.

Oh, and Mod Podge and I are back on speaking terms.  After the desk had totally dried overnight, ALL the papers totally laid down flat and perfect.


Barbie photo from here.