A Desk for My Wife


JohnG

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for the replies!

No, the drawers are not file size. My wife figured that since I have (2) 24” depth file drawers on my desk, she doesn’t need any.  I keep all of our family stuff organized anyway, and she doesn’t need any filing space for her use, so we took out the file drawers from her desk design. There will be a top drawer  about 3” tall and a lower drawer about 6” tall. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Let’s see, it’s been a while since I posted an update. I’ve had a couple side projects come up that took my attention— a TWW kid’s kitchen step stool for our daughter, and a couple small gifts on the lathe. Then it got hot. Then I decided that I needed to rearrange a lot of the things in my shop (garage). I haven’t finished yet, so there’s always stuff in my way. 

I also found some mistakes, and then made some new mistakes. My shop time lately has been frustrating, so it has been more limited

Back to the desk-

I realized I hadn’t incorporated any sort of front rail, and the top drawers limit how tall it can be. I also had cut upper mortises into the insides of the front legs, which wasn’t needed. In order to cover this up a bit, I made a twin dovetail/tenon thing. It came out looking terrible, but should be strong enough with some epoxy to fill the gaps. It won’t be seen, anyway. 

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I have also finished the stiles go divide up the panels. I cut the tenons before cutting the grooves, which was a mistake looking back. It made cutting the grooves a bit sketchy, so I took the cuts slow and easy.

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It’s slowly coming together. I’ll use my new Domino to speed some parts of this up. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Had some good time in the shop yesterday. I was able to cut and fit the outer panels. I also cut the tapers on the legs, rough cut on the bandsaw and then cleaned up with a hand plane. 

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I also cut the rails for the inner sides of the drawer boxes. 

The tongue of the panels are pretty tight in the groove of the frames, I think I will go back and shave them down a bit more.

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  • 1 month later...
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  • 5 weeks later...

It turns out that I'm not very good at keeping up with this journal.

I finished priming the pieces and then glued up the base. I did it in a few stages- first the side frame and panel assemblies, then the rear. I glued the stiles in place and left the panels floating, and clamped them up and dry fit the legs in place to keep everything aligned while the glue dried. Second I glued the legs to the side F&P assemblies. Third was everything else. I used epoxy for the third glue up, since I knew it would take me a while to make sure everything was straight and square. It went pretty well overall, I did catch one part misaligned before the epoxy set and was able to fix it.

Next I painted on a coat of the base color (wife wants the 'distressed' look). Then installed the drawer slides and drawers. This brings us to here-

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I hate working with drawer slides, and I always worry that I am doing it wrong. Other than one mindless mistake, I got the drawers installed and working well. The fronts for the sides have been cut to final size and sanded. I need to do some final sizing and determine the profile for the front of the middle tray.

However, as I finished installing the drawers and was feeling pretty good with myself, I noticed a major flaw in my design. I had planned for the top drawer fronts to match the height of the top rails on the side/back panels. As seen here. (Don't mind the rough paint job, there will be another base coat and sanding before the top color goes on)

desk2.thumb.jpg.a0cb63ae04a96579df1d49198a3161e0.jpg

Unfortunately I had not originally planned on the flat rail going across the front of the desk. So now my drawer fronts will actually sit about 3/4" lower than the rails.

desk1.thumb.jpg.98489f4dbdd9904a73c25bbdc8c38c82.jpg

 

Any suggestions? I can either live with it and chalk it up to a learning experience, or I can cut down the top drawer from 2.25" deep to 1.5" deep and move them up and remake all the drawer fronts. The current location for the desk is a little nook, so the sides won't be seen. Future locations are unknown.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/5/2018 at 11:05 PM, JohnG said:

However, as I finished installing the drawers and was feeling pretty good with myself, I noticed a major flaw in my design. I had planned for the top drawer fronts to match the height of the top rails on the side/back panels. As seen here. (Don't mind the rough paint job, there will be another base coat and sanding before the top color goes on)

...

Unfortunately I had not originally planned on the flat rail going across the front of the desk. So now my drawer fronts will actually sit about 3/4" lower than the side rails.

...

Any suggestions? I can either live with it and chalk it up to a learning experience, or I can cut down the top drawer from 2.25" deep to 1.5" deep and move them up and remake all the drawer fronts. The current location for the desk is a little nook, so the sides won't be seen. Future locations are unknown.

For the record, I just left it as-is. My wife didn’t care about the continuity from front to sides (as I expected), and it can’t at all be seen in its current location. I can remake the drawers later on if it will be exposed and bothers me. Lesson learned. 

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