Some years back, when we were quite a bit worse off financially, we had to really be creative about decorating and furnishing. We had a door on the box room upstairs which had a massive gap under it, and it all but closed. Finally, one day we needed to get the door’s issues worked out once and for all so it would close, so we called in the help of the local council, from whom we rented the house, and they came along and replaced it with a new door. Being the council, they did not remove the old door, but rather, left it here for us to dispose of.
Meanwhile, we had been searching high and low for a desk that would fit the alcove on the west end of the living room downstairs for some time, and were having no luck as everything we found was either slightly too big, or way too small.
In the end I cut the bottom two panels off the door and cut them in half. I also got hold of a massive board, maybe 3×5 inches by several feet long, that I have cut out of our attic as it seemed to serve no purpose other than to get in the way every time we went up there to put something in storage.
Using the top half of the door for a surface, and the long 3×5 for legs, I made a desk that was anchored directly into the brick at the back of the alcove, and whose outer edge was supported by two legs cut from the 3×5, and placed at an angle so they came to the floor where the floor came to the wall. This configuration positioned the legs so I could anchor them and they not get kicked loose, and so they were more out of the way for my legs as I sat. It also made the desk strong enough I could sit on its outer edge with no fear of it coming loose or breaking. It was a very strong desk!
The two panel halves from the bottom were turned into a shelf, and into a tray that slid out from under the desk surface on drawer slides I got out of the old kitchen cabinetry. This tray was a perfect fit for my computer mouse and keyboard.
When it was done, my wife looked at it with a scowl and said that it was not very much to look at. I had sanded all the wood down on the top surfaces, exposing bear cedar, and I loved the smell. There was no place left to compromise, and I let her tough it out.
Over the years since, she has suggested a couple of ideas to decorate the desk, from paint to skirting which would hide the large legs. But I still let her tough it out.
Finally, as we are preparing to move house from here to America, I almost ceremoniously took down the desk yesterday. After several years stood strong, and proud, it only took undoing five screws from the wall, and it was off once and for all. As the pieces came down, and I broke the legs from the desktop, my wife watched in silence.
When I had finished breaking the desk to the point of no return, my wife looked at the heap on the floor and said, “you really did do a good job of that thing.” Had she been speaking of my breaking it down, I might have been relieved. But she was speaking of how I had built such a strong desk to serve my needs from only a door and a couple of pieces of wood.
Kelsey J Bacon
Worcester, England
28 March 2010