As I mentioned, the desk project turned out to be much more involved than I planned. I decided to use Sketchup, a 3D design program to design a desk. Sketchup is not an easy program to learn, but I had taught myself the basics earlier when I designed a new mantel for our fireplace. I needed to refresh my limited skills and expand on them so that I could design a small desk with drawers, along with a stand with more drawers for my wine fridge. So first I  had to re-learn Sketchup. Here are the designs I did for the two items:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before I started the build though, I got the opportunity to pick up a cool little secretary desk. Although it had no drawers (badly needed to store all sorts of parts, tools and other gear), it turned out that at about the same time, my HOA was getting rid of some office furniture, and I picked up a small file cabinet that was just the right height to work as a base for the desk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn’t like the legs on the original secretary so I decided to remove them and build a new set for one side of the desk, using the file cabinet to support the other side. The secretary was not very wide, so I decided to offset the file cabinet. The desk would look a little weird, but would work well for setting up my ham radio.

 

Sometimes these “opportunities” are just the thing, but sometimes they don’t work out as we envision. I thought it would be easy to put the pieces together, but it took months! It was especially difficult when it came to painting the desk because I literally had sit and watch paint dry. My original idea was to spray paint, but painting took forever! I would do a coat and then have to sit and watch the paint dry. Since my shop was at Leslie’s former house, 20 traffic-clogged miles from home, I couldn’t just do a coat and run home. But I couldn’t get much done in a day so I had to make a lot of trips. (This was all well before the pandemic.)

Finally I got everything together. I had to take it all apart to transport it home, and then reassemble it. Once I reassembled it, I rolled it from my office into the living room to show it to Janie, and it promptly collapsed! I can’t describe the feeling of anger and defeat I felt! I was ready to give up! But after a few days, I decided to buck up and try to redesign the failed parts and I finally got it to work. Still, I needed to paint the redesigned parts and I decided to have it painted at a furniture shop–4 pieces cost more than an entire Ikea desk would have cost! Painting was supposed to take 2 weeks but took 3-1/2. In addition, when I reassembled the desk, I had made a mistake so I still had to go to the shop to modify one piece.