Zen and the Art of Fixing an Old Desk
My Pronking Year: March
About a month ago, while driving home from the library, jubilant that I finally got there early enough to snag a copy of The Substance, I spotted an old rolltop desk by the side of the road with a FREE sign on it.
The desk I have used for fifteen years was a flat-pack piece that I assembled alone in my first apartment. It was always slightly wobbly, but it survived enough wear that I wrote a decade’s worth of papers and blog posts, my dissertation, an abandoned novel, and a memoir and a half at it. It also made it through four moves, but now and then a screw randomly fell out.
But my good old desk has no drawers, and this rolltop desk has so many.
So after work, Julio asked our neighbor if he could help bring the desk home. Greg is the best and within an hour, he and Julio were unloading the desk from the back of a pickup into our garage and almost getting it stuck in the doorway to our house. I did not realize until then how huge the desk is. Thank you and I’m sorry, Greg!
When I started My Pronking Year in January, I had a list of a few slow projects I wanted to complete, but I also banked on some projects finding me. This is one of those projects. I did not set out to learn anything about woodworking, but this desk was too beautiful to pass up.
Fixing the Old Executive Desk
For a brief period about a year ago, I watched a bunch of DIY videos of women flipping thrifted furniture, redoing old pieces with beautiful new finishes and hardware. The process looked satisfying, and the videos gave me a basic idea of what I needed to do. I did not want to do any dramatic redesigns, just restore what was already there, so I figured I would need:
a palm sander
sandpaper in a high and low grit (I ended up using 80, 180, and 220)
wood glue
wood conditioner
wood stain, plus foam brushes and stain cloths1
polyurethane
safety gear
I spent $97.40 on the project, which I think is around what I paid for my little wobbly desk in 2009.
Julio had a business trip that took him away from home for about a week and it has been my tradition to take up a project while he is away. In the past, I have potty trained our child, dealt with flies attacking Luna, and worked on big revisions. This time, I sanded the desk.
I rented a palm sander for 24 hours for $22 (including the rental protection in case I broke the thing). From watching all those videos, I had a decent idea of how it worked, but attaching the sandpaper was not intuitive, and the instruction booklet was missing from the sander’s case. YouTube to the rescue. To find the right sandpaper (with help from a man at the corner hardware store), figure out how to use the sander, and do two passes with 80-grit paper and two with 180 took about six hours. The sander had a little vacuum bag attached to the back but that did not seem to help much, so this was quite the dusty job. After returning the sander, I went over a few spots by hand with 220-grit and quickly realized how much labor the power tool had saved me. As a bonus, I also cleaned the garage.
There were a couple of spots on one side where the wood dowel pins were not slotted in properly above and below the top drawer. With a mallet, I drove those in as best I could before they wouldn’t budge anymore. It wasn’t perfect, but it improved. I was pleasantly surprised when they clicked into place further when we moved the desk into the house. Something about turning the desk to get it through the door must have helped. I decided not to rebuild the broken center drawer, because I was more likely to repeatedly bang my knees on it than need it.
Next, I conditioned the wood and stained it with an oil-based stain in a shade called Aged Barrel. The finished result did not look like the color on the can, but I am okay with how it turned out. If I could go back, I would have used a water-based stain instead, because the oil-based stain was pretty noxious. After it dried and cured for four days, I added two coats of water-based polyurethane and that went on well and helped with the odor.
Part of the rolltop was separating and that went back together with wood glue. The hold on it is not very strong, so I suspect I will be redoing this at some point, but I also do not anticipate rolling the top down much.
After that, I reinstalled the (cleaned) hardware on the drawers and was done!2 I am sure that a more seasoned or patient craftsperson could have done a better job than I did, but I think the desk looks beautiful.
I am no Ron Swanson
Although using the palm sander was fun, while staining the desk, I realized that I do not have the temperament of a woodworker.
I waited to stain until Julio was home. While he played with our daughter, I listened to Cowboy Carter and worked on the desk in the garage. Sometime while I was wedged under the desk, the album ended and I kept working for a long time with wireless earbuds in, but nothing playing, in a groove with the quiet work. I knew that I was supposed to apply stain along the grain of the wood, but the grain on this assembled desk went several different directions. I hated the smell. I was getting covered in schmutz from the garage, and my back hurt from contorting to apply the stain without touching the desk with my skin or clothes. It took longer than I expected, but when I finished, Julio made me a Bear Omelet (Inspired by Sydney on The Bear: a French omelet filled with herbed Boursin cheese and topped with crumbled sour cream and onion chips—yes, Chef!).
Although I did not enjoy staining, I could understand why this type of work is associated with a certain brand of masculinity. It’s quiet, methodical, and it requires precision but also care. It’s an art, but not artsy unless you want it to be. It’s very Aidan Shaw.
I also thought about my dad while working. Tomorrow, it will have been seven years since I saw him in person. Sometimes the suddenness of his death is still a little unbelievable. Maybe he was already on my mind because the hardware store had a Pinewood Derby display, and he loved that race. Something about my dad that was as comical as it was frustrating was that he could always tell you how to do something as though he were an expert, even if he was not. Dad would have a lot of pointers for this project, based on nothing more than years of watching This Old House, and that made me miss him acutely.
The work also caused me to rethink an incident from the week before when Julio called his dad, a retired mechanic, to ask a question about my car. I tried to hasten him off the phone and felt annoyed for reasons that I do not understand. I hate asking for help and that is a problem that I could work on. Also, Julio’s parents were on a long-anticipated vacation. On one hand, I stand by my assertion that the question could have waited, but on the other, I should not get annoyed by him asking his dad for help. If you still have a dad, maybe call and ask him for advice, even if you don’t need or want it.
So, this project reinforced that I should lean into the ways that slow work challenges me. And that the cultural association between woodworking and masculinity is alive and well.
From Trash to Treasure
When it came time to move the desk inside, I was astonished by how heavy it was. And I am both strong and stubborn. I had pushed it around in the garage a bit, but lifting it was shockingly difficult. The desk has two parts: the desktop with the rolling portion and drawers attached, and the bottom portion of legs, which is much lighter. Julio was a champ leading the effort, but I for sure thought I was going to lose a finger when we put down the top part to move the bottom portion inside first. Instead, I merely cut my finger and yelped a lot.
I superglued little squares cut from a leftover strip of rug mat so if I need to move the desk a bit to access the outlet, I can do so without gashing the floor.
In all, I am thrilled with how it turned out. The desktop is higher and bigger than my old little desk, which I hope will help with both posture and Zoom camera angles. The top shelf may even allow me to use it as a standing desk from time to time. I have drawers for notepads, embroidery supplies, headphones, pens, other art supplies, and a built-in file drawer. I have long had a hard time storing all the notions I need for various projects, and now everything has a place. My old desk moved down to our basement, in case, someday, my daughter needs it for years of writing papers.
Bonus: Fear of Furniture
After moving the desk into the house from the garage, I felt a surge of anxiety. It started with worries about the wood stain poisoning our indoor air quality. I have been running the air purifier next to it to help. Then, as my imagination ran amok, I wondered if I should sage the thing or something. What if it was a haunted desk!?! I have to laugh at myself, but it reminded me of an article I read in grad school. I cannot find it anymore, but it was about “fear of furniture” in British literature from the Victorian Era. If I recall correctly, the author highlighted how many stories from that time featured a haunted object, usually brought into a home from abroad, and how those spooky stories represented guilt and other complicated feelings about the height of colonialism and the British Empire. It was so interesting. So, if you know what article that was, please, please tell me!
Which have to be disposed of properly so they do not spontaneously combust. Fun.
So, after sanding the little drawers, I started to put them where they went to get them out of the way, forgetting that I had taken the hardware off and would have no way to pull them back out. Fortunately, I realized what I was doing before I put more than three in. Unfortunately, I have not gotten two of them back out yet. Silly me.
Looks like you did a great job! Especially since it was your first ever at this sort of thing! Hats off for saving it.
I bought a secondhand desk but, having once sanded and painted a table, I only thought about sanding the desk down for about 2 minutes before just giving it a good clean and polish!