Ahem. Okay, they're probably not worth a round of applause, but they do look better than before, honest! Except I forgot to take any before pictures, but they were just plain, uninteresting pine. They're the cheapy-cheap Rast drawers from Ikea, which we bought so we had somewhere other than the floor to store our tools, and they do the job.
But wait, that's not all. You may look at the picture of the drawers above and think "wow, wouldn't that look much better if it had five nice planks of wood across the top, that way you could use it as a desk?". Well, we're obviously on the same wavelength, because that's what I thought too! And after Kevin agreeing and me mocking up some photoshop pics to decide on the colour, I took my dad on a nice outing to B&Q to get some wood. This turned out to be a good move, because we went on a Wednesday and he's over 60 (only just, and you'd totally never tell!) he got a super-duper-magic diamond card and I got a super-duper magic 10% off! So instead of costing £44 all that lovely timber was only £40. Huzzah!
The cashier did ask if either of us had a diamond card though, and you can only get one if you're over 60, so either she was being polite to my dad or I look about 30 years older than I actually am. Obviously all this work is ageing me and giving me greys. Or I had paint in my hair. Which I actually did, but still, it was definitely more on the ends, and I still don't think grey hairs would make me look that much older. We'll stick with her being polite, I think.
Anyway, the paint in my hair was from painting the two spare dining chairs that we've got. I just gave them a couple of coats of matt white and one of satin finish Milk White Crown paint, so they match the drawers on the chests, which, incidentally, are varnished with Homebase Walnut wood stain, which I used before to stain our bedside cabinets.
Back to the desk, when I got home I laid out the wood and selected the prettiest sides of each plank. Then I got Kevin's power sander and sanded each plank just to get rid of a few rough bits. After a couple of days of varnishing (don't worry, most of that time was spent waiting for it to dry and recovering from all the fumes) they looked all beautiful and lovely like this:
Once we'd decided which order the planks were going to go in (a very important decision, I'm sure you'll agree) I flipped them all over and used all my amazing brute strength to screw them together using some old shelves to brace them. I did have to put all my weight on each screw to get them in, despite having drilled pilot holes in the shelves beforehand, and there was one stubborn screw that wouldn't go in, but I was doubling up screws for extra strength anyway, so I just took it out and threw it in the bin in protest. That'll learn it! Well, it made me feel better anyway.
I didn't want the underside of the desk to look unfinished, but I didn't want to spend another two days varnishing either, so as a compromise I used some dark blue paint we had left over from the fireplace insert (blog post coming soon! 2014 at the latest!) to paint where it would show. 2 coats later and it was super dark navy blue and very purty.
Then I tried manhandling it into place on my own at 10 o'clock at night so it would be ready for Kevin to see when he got home, but it was just too heavy to lift high enough by myself, so I had to give up. But we did it first thing the next morning, and we had this!
The drawers are still open because I'm waiting for the paint and varnish to completely dry before screwing the drawer knobs on fully, because we're quite possibly going to change them and I don't want them to leave marks. But look at the shiny...
In the true spirit of never having a tidy spare room, one day after the desk was finished, it looked like this:
But it's okay, because 2 hours, 2 bacon sandwiches, 45 arguments and 3 temper tantrums later, we'd managed to put my old bed back together so now it can actually be called a bedroom! Just gotta buy some bedding now...
Now the only extra stuff we have is all propped up against one wall, but at least three of those doors are getting rehung this week, and then hopefully it'll be warm enough to strip the remaining doors outside with the heat gun.
Here's to some decent weather for once!
