Desk Project Weekend

Remember this:

I bought a super old, super heavy desk on craigslist and Kolbe and I spent the New Years weekend refinishing it.  I have to stop here to say I've lived in the Rocky Mountains for all of my life up until a few months ago.  Why do I mention this? Well living in Utah or surrounding areas also means SNOW.  So I thought it was pretty cool that we could work on this project OUTSIDE and in t-shirts!  Granted it rained one of those days, so we had to quit early and the desk isn't completed yet, it was still crazy to think I was doing this in the middle of winter.  I sent a almost finished picture to a friend in Utah and she asked if we were working on it in the garage and I laughed and told her we were outside, I'm pretty sure she was jealous.

We started nice and early Friday morning and after about 2 hours of sanding I looked at Kolbe and asked him if we were almost done yet.  He laughed and said, far from it.  You see he finds the sanding and perfecting process relaxing and fun, while I find the staining and seeing the finished project as the fun part.  We had a good laugh and I got back to sanding.  Then Saturday comes and we sand and sand some more!  I'll admit I figured I might as well enjoy it cause it was looking like we might be sanding this all month.  Saturday afternoon we went to Lowe's and figured out stain color for the desk and the dresser we were doing at the same time.

When we got home I finally got to start staining the dresser, cause Kolbe felt like there was some more work to be done on the desk (I'll admit it was fun to watch him get so involved in working on my desk).  We started staining and he was grumbling about how he didn't like this part and I was in staining heaven!  We realized that the parts of the project we both like while different complement the other persons likes.  He gets all OCD about the details while I get excited and crazy about the staining (or painting).  He makes sure the project will be quality and I make sure it will be pretty.  In our lives we work that way a lot too.  We have the same goal but we like different parts of that goal which works really well at accomplishing a task or anything we do.

Ziggy, helping me, or not so much. 

So back to my desk.... Finally on Sunday I got to stain the desk!  We had watched weather.com and it said it might rain later in the day so after I had finished the staining I looked at the sky and we debated whether I should start the clear tip coat.  Me being the impatient one wanted to start but we (mostly Kolbe) decided we should wait to make sure the stain was sufficiently dry, which for me equals not getting my office put together until next weekend, ugh.  It ended up being a good thing because just as we got the desk back into the house and the tools and stuff cleaned up the first few rain drops began to fall.

We spent the rest of the afternoon inside hanging out.  I made a pot roast (which I think was my first time making one on my own, and thanks mom for answering the phone and helping me out) we watched some TV and of course played some video games, which means Kolbe played while I got on the internet and caught up on some blog reading.  All in all it was a great productive weekend.

I know this was a big story with no actual finished desk photos but they will be coming very soon (now that the staining is done!)  I will however give you a little sampling of the finished product, pre-clear coat stain.

Ohhh, I think I'm going to love it!

Here is how Deja helps, and Copper just likes to be in all the pictures