4/6: I Built a Desk

In my ongoing crusade to convince people that I have interests that don't involve amputations and insurance claims, you may hear me say that I'm "into woodworking". I feel there's a critical distinction between that and calling myself a "woodworker".

Woodworkers sketch up plans with intricate measurements and angles. Guys who are into woodworking cut the first leg of a table and that's how they decide how tall the table's going to be. Woodworkers pick their stock based on board straightness, knot placement, grain quality. Guys who are into woodworking scoop up the least dilapidated pallet from behind the hardscaping wholesaler and go to town with a crowbar. Woodworkers whip out square pencils and sliding rules like eleventh fingers. Guys who are into woodworking discover dynamic new combinations of profanity while spending twenty minutes sifting through an undersized basement full of sawdust looking for the ballpoint pen they put down four months ago.

Nick Offerman is a woodworker. Sam Rapine is into woodworking.

With that disclaimer out of the way, I built a desk.

Any closer and you can see the problems.

I'd like to tell you that building this was a flight of quarantined inspiration, but that would discount the six or so weeks in which this sat, half finished, staring balefully at me from the corner of the basement as I chipped away at the dozen other projects that lurk down there (ranging from a jiu-jitsu belt rack to a fermenting 300 year old Finnish beer recipe). However, the sudden and indefinite virtualization of my academic career may have forced my hand to some degree, as I tried to cram four class days onto a 14"x 24" desk surface.

My sense of morality and my wallet are both happy to report that every piece of material in this desk is upcycled. The legs, frame boards, and shelf are from a skid that transported bricks to a landscaping company headquartered about a quarter mile from my house. The desktop is actually the long side of a crate that transported one of the first laser printers to the TV Guide printing facility in Radnor when I was about three years old. My dad, enterprising soul that he is, snagged the perfectly level frames and beat them into a workbench. A quarter century later, while dismantling them in preparation of selling the house, he offered them up to me. Circle of life and all that.

I used this one's twin, but it wasn't much cleaner.

I had a few goals in mind for this piece. First, I wanted a whole hell of a lot more desk space than I had on the old desk, a curb-alerted Ikea piece the likes of which was probably first assembled in one of Franz Kafka's more tormented fever dreams. Tangential to that, I wanted to mount the monitor to maximize desktop surface, and because my brother has a similar setup and it just looks damn cool. I ended up mounting a cleat on the back of the lower frame and using that to anchor a pallet stalk that places the monitor about eight inches above the desk, about at eye level.

Lastly, I wanted to get the PC unit itself ticked away out of sight. I measured its height, tacked on an inch for access, and mounted a straight board anchoring to the lower frame on three sides:

Cable management will come, I tell myself, and for a moment I almost believe it.

Regarding the wood itself, the stain/sealant is just two coats of pecan.I gave every surface a thorough sanding with 120 grit. The surface received two runs at 120, two at 220, and one at 400 after the second coat. I'm going to see how it settles out and possibly give it a few runs with Butcher's wax that I found in the basement. Trusty as it comes.

It does have a certain shine to it.

It holds my setup, it doesn't wobble, and it's got enough space to land a plane on. And y'know, it doesn't look half bad for the materials used. I didn't so much buff out the imperfections as harass them a bit with sandpaper and then immortalize them with sealant. The result is a frame with some definitive asymmetry and a desktop that's definitely got some terrain to it.

Really though, what would I do with a nice desk? Beat the crap out of it with chair legs, boots, and guitar parts, and eat away at the stain with a thousand coffee cup rings. It's the same reason I drive a car that's old enough to drink and I have the same phone as your grandmother and your drug dealer. Strip away the bells and whistles, ditch the distractions, and let the form follow function. You just might find some character hiding in the grain.

Listening to: Bob Dylan-"Mozambique"
Reading: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller