Dawn of a New Desk

We spent pretty much the entire day yesterday dragging a "new" desk into The Straw House.  (Click on the thumbnail for a larger view.)  As visitors here know, we've been using a 6-foot plastic folding table for a desk since late in 2009.  Not only was the plastic truly ugly but is was a "stuff magnet" and that compounded its ugliness.  Susun finally hit the wall with the plastic table a few days ago and demanded change.  She had a plan to put a board over two file cabinets.  I protested that such a plan was simply trading one form of ugliness for another form.  Meanwhile, I decided I better find a real desk PRONTO! Where to turn?  Craigs List, of course.  Much to our mutual surprise, the Flagstaff Craigs List is literally littered with desks of all types, sizes, prices and descriptions.  We spotted this one immediately and it sounded perfect.  Little did we know it was BETTER than perfect.

The desk is solid wood and built like a tank.  It weighs a ton, well more than 100 pounds--there's no way both of us can lift and carry it.  The desk was purchased new sometime back probably in the late 1950's or early 1960's.  It stayed in the same family since then.  We found it sitting in a garage of a resident state employee at the Page Springs Fish Hatchery.  The couple who sold it told us the desk's whole pedigree spanning roughly 50 years. We bought it for $40. Not everyone would want a desk this big and heavy.  It takes a LOT of effort to load a desk like this into a pickup truck and a lot more effort to get it safely out of the truck and inside a house.  We're talking a MAJOR moving experience here.

  We even had to take the camper shell off the Nissan to haul the desk.  Here's at least a partial list of all the tools we had to use to haul and install the desk: 50 feet of cam buckle straps, a Harbor Freight furniture moving pad kit, back braces, rebar and baling twine to secure the dismounted camper, two partial sheets of plywood, a tarp, various foam pieces, a one-ton automotive floor jack, wrenches, pliers, a strap wrench, a 500-pound capacity moving dolly, and a down parka.  A down parka?  Say what?  Well, the parka went over the top of the dolly to keep the desktop from getting marred.  The process started about 10 am when we began work to dismount the camper shell.  It ended at 3 pm when we had the desk installed and some of its contents in place.  Meanwhile, remounting the camper shell and the cleanup of all of the flotsam we used to mess with the desk took another 90 minutes.  So, all-in-all, the whole process was a 6.5 hour gig or roughly 13 "person hours."

We're both totally pleased with this new addition to our life.  We emailed the above photo of the desk to the sellers and they are also very happy that their beloved desk found an appropriate "good home."  This desk is so stout it's amazing.  We once had an old wood desk for nearly 25 years.  It had been the Santa Fe railroad station master's desk in Flagstaff.  It seemed stout, too, but NO where near as stout as this one.  Well, now we can stash all of our flotsam in its various drawers and keep the place looking so much more tidy.

It was a very good day.  Cheers!  jp