Our Project.

When we moved into our apartment we had nothing, not a thing.  I had been living in my employers house for a year, so I had my clothes and an old chair I'd picked up off the streets in NYC.  Mckay had a little more than what I did, but I had a "no bachelor" rule.  Meaning, the old black lacquer IKEA dresser had to go (replaced with an antique 1960's mahogany dresser, Criagslist find!).

So we had nothing.

I was looking on Freecycle for a desk and came across a broken-down, rained on, falling-apart beauty.  Only the picture was tiny so I couldn't really get a feel for the condition it was in, but asked for it anyway.  On a Saturday Mckay and a friend went to pick it up and came home with quite the piece of junk.  "What have I done?" (my thought).

But Mckay said, "Let's make it our project!", and so we did! And I am so thrilled with the end result.

 First, we cleaned.  We wore down two sponges until they were garbage worthy.  Yes, Mckay pulled out his headlamp, which was both cute and funny, but also practical.  {See, we didn't have a light source in our living room until we'd been living in our apartment for a month and I finally went and bought us a lamp.} 

 Then we stripped.

The stain that is, we stripped the stain off, with very strong chemicals that burned my skin when the breezy November morning blew it up into my face.  It was a gooey mess, but so worth it, the wood was completely untreated by the time we finished that part.

 Then he sanded the body and I sanded the drawers.  That took us hours, it was great, noisy, messy fun.

 I was so stumped on how to get rid of all the sawdust, we had serious amounts of it everywhere.  Then I had a brilliant, resourceful idea & brought out my hairdryer (good thing it is so powerful) and got rid of the first layer quite easily.  After that we had to wipe it down many, many times.

 Next, my man put nails and screws all over it to make it strong again. We accidentally let the top of the desk sit between two chairs for a few days and it caused some warping of the wood, so he had to fix that for us. 

The last step, paint.  Bavarian creme.  1 pint.  4 coats.  A light sand.  Knobs.

VOILA!

It's love.