Part 2: We Definitely Know What We Are Doing
As you might remember from Part 1 of the critically acclaimed series "We Definitely Know What We Are Doing," we taught ourselves how to glue wood together. After measuring, cutting, drilling, and gluing, we moved on to the next steps:
Step 4: Sand the heck out of that desk
Using my very favorite tool, the sheet sander, I went over every inch of the desk, first with a course paper and finally with a fine grain. I rounded the edges at the front of the desk and worked to even out some parts on the rest of it. You might say I sanded the heck out of that desk.
Step 5: Stain the heck out of that desk
We used a very light stain - Minwax Satin Polyshades in Classic Oak. It went on very evenly. I think the key is a good brush. For now, it only has one coat on it, but we might go over it again later to deepen the hue.
Step 6: Mount the heck out of that desk
This was arguably the hardest part of the project. If you have an old home, you know that the walls and floors don't always even out to right angles. Getting our 4 brackets even was a challenge. Lots of leveling, lots of pencil marks.
Once we measured and marked, Dan went in with a hammer drill, which is an incredibly useful tool if you ever need to drill into brick. It makes a horribly loud sound and creates a good amount of dust, but hey, all in a day.
Brackets in place, we laid the desk on top, screwed them in from the bottom, and stood back in awe of our accomplishment.
Perfect timing as we finished right in time for finals week, so I was able to spend a good amount of time test driving this desk. I'm here to tell you that floating desks really do make homework more fun!
Next comes the shelves, painting the trim, and final coat on the white floors. And hanging pictures. Oh and also some other things, too. These projects never have a clear end.
For Steps 1 - 3 and list of tools and supplies used in this project, read the first post in this series, Part 1: We Definitely Know What We Are Doing.