No Projects On My Pretty New Desk

As of today my house is 5 months old. So much has happened around here in just a short period of time. I am excited to write this post for 2 reasons. 1. This is the last piece of furniture that I needed to build or assemble for the office, 2. Once this is done I get to ORGANIZE!  I have to say it is really starting to come together. More importantly it's starting to feel creative.

Decorative Transfer Sheet

Last weekend I finally built myself a new desk. Once I moved I decided to turn my old desks into work tables and build a pretty new one for everyday. Now, the original plan was not to build one...I was actually going to buy it (I know hard to believe). I saw a design I liked in IKEA. It was glass with a black design on the under side. I almost couldn't believe it. I found a piece of furniture that I like and nicely priced in the store! Unfortunately though IKEA no longer makes that specific desk top. So, in typical Tanaira fashion I ended up creating my own variation. This plan has actually been in the works for months. A while back I was at Michaels and saw these clear decorative transfer sheets. My idea was to use these and place them between 2 pieces of glass. Skip ahead to the present and I realized that I under estimated just how expensive table glass was. Who knew? Throw in the fact that I needed 2 pretty big pieces, it just seemed like the wrong road to go down. So, I changed it up. I still wanted to use my transfer sheets. Instead of glass I decided to build a solid desk, paint it white, and use the transfer sheets on top. I figured the black design on the white top would still give a really nice contrast.

Once the logistics were done, it was time to get building. I decided on a size of 48"x30". I had the guy at Home Depot cut 2 pieces of 2ft wide MDF to 30". I then glued them together and added an extra piece of wood at the seam for additional support.

Once the top was done, I needed legs. I actually found some nice legs at Ikea.

They were the exact style that I wanted. Only thing is they were a gray color. They had white ones, but they were all sold out. I didn't feel like waiting for the white ones to come back in stock so, I just got the gray ones and painted them. I was already painting the rest of the desk...what's 4 extra legs. With the legs attached it was time to glue the sides down and paint. The whole thing got 2 coats of Behr Ultra Paint in the color Frost. 

It ended up just the right size. Big enough where I don't feel cramped, but not so big that it starts to take over the room. With the desk base complete it was time to add the transfer sheets. I laid them all out and matched up the design. It took 12 sheets total to cover the whole thing. To protect the top I added a piece of acrylic. Now, let me tell you how painful this process was.  I would not suggest cutting acrylic sheets yourself unless you have to, and if you must WEAR SAFETY GOGGLES. The guy at Home Depot warned me. He said score it a lot of times first, and then put it on the side of the table and put pressure down to snap off the piece. I ran the blade across the sheet 15-20 times (twice as much as the instructions said). I should have done more, but I was being impatient. I snapped the piece at the scored line, but got an uneven cut. Boy did that suck. If I was tired and impatient before, to get the excess off was so much worse. At first I tried cutting, rescoring, and several other things. Nothing was working. My uncle suggested shaving it with a metal file. That made sense, but only lasted about 5 minutes. It was way more work than I ever cared to do. I saw hours of my life passing me by. Lucky for me though I have a dremel with a filing attachment. That did just the trick. I plugged it in, and got to filing. The whole thing took me a couple of hours. I had to take a break about 2/3 of the way in because I got a piece of acrylic in my eye. I knew better though. Half way through as I felt acrylic bits flying around, something said to me to go put my goggles on. I ignored the little voice in my head, and got shot in the eye. I've officially learned my lesson. So, once the piece was cut it was time to add the finishing touches, and then stand back and marvel at my handy work

I have to say once again, I am very happy with the turn out. I wasn't sure how I would feel being that it wasn't my original idea. It came out wonderful none the less. I've only been done for a week, but being able to have a separate desk and work tables is really quite nice. My only complaint is that it's heavy as all get out. Well I guess that's not a bad thing really. I just can't slide it across the room very easily. I think at some point I'm going to go back and reinforce the bottom for extra support. For right now though, I'm just going to enjoy it.

So this was the last "big" piece of furniture for the office. Now that it's done, it's time for the fun part to begin. I have been designing this room in my head for at least a year. Needless to say I'm so excited I could spit. (Insert very awesome happy dance here) So, stay tuned because this should be all kinds of amazing. Until the next project.