heirloom quality<\/em>. I fully expect Finn to be carting this with him when he goes off to college (secured through all the hard work he’d better start putting in, sat at this desk).<\/p>\nThere’s a few minor bits that could be better, but the untrained eye would be hard-pushed to notice them, and I’m not going to point them out. Certainly not to an over-critical nine-year-old, anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 Besides, by the time Gil has finished tap-dancing on the top of it, and Freya has used it to paint her nails on, I’m sure any minor imperfections in my\u00c2\u00a0craftsmanship will barely be noticeable. And what was Finn’s response to my three months of blood, sweat, and the occasional tear, all for his benefit? “‘s OK…”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I finally finished the desk I’ve been building all Summer.\u00c2\u00a0 I started it not long after the kids broke up for summer recess, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,6],"tags":[62],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-life","tag-woodwork"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions\/193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Finn's](\"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-content\/fmoblog_thumbs\/t_12208202836799.jpg\" "\\"Finn's")
<\/a>I started on this uncharacteristically-ambitious project because Finn needed a new desk so he can knuckle down to some serious schoolwork (hey, a father can dream, can’t he??).\u00c2\u00a0 Most of the desks in the stores are plywood crap that wouldn’t stand up to some vigorous pencil-pushing let alone Finn banging his books around on it in a fit because he doesn’t want to do his homework,\u00c2\u00a0so I reasoned\u00c2\u00a0I could build a better one myself.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 I also wanted Finn to have something that matched his bed.\u00c2\u00a0 The bed came from Pottery Barn Kids, but they don’t offer a desk in the same style.\u00c2\u00a0 Plus, I reasoned, if I hand-made something for the boy he might\u00c2\u00a0recognize it as a demonstration of my fatherly love and devotion. And maybe also see that sometimes it’s worth putting time and effort into something.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-content\/fmoblog_thumbs\/t_12208202201577.jpg\" "\\"The")
<\/a>I’d done a bit of woodwork back in school (got an A-grade in my ‘O’ level, in fact…), and figured it would be good to get back into some good, honest craftsmanship.\u00c2\u00a0 I haven’t actually made anything in some 20 years (!) but I figured it was probably like riding a bike – some skills you never forget.\u00c2\u00a0 My first problem was that I didn’t have a plan – other than the bed itself – to work from.\u00c2\u00a0 Handily, I also got an A-grade in Technical Drawing so I was able to put those skills (I use the term loosely) to use as well, knocking up a quick one-pager that managed to guide me through the whole project.<\/p>\n![\"Finn's](\"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-content\/fmoblog_thumbs\/t_12208203510628.jpg\" "\\"Finn's")
<\/a>Overall, now it’s done, I’m pretty pleased with it. Once I’d got it in place in\u00c2\u00a0Finn’s room, even I was surprised at how professional<\/em> it looks.\u00c2\u00a0 It matches the bed so well (right down to the paint, thanks to Lowe’s matching\u00c2\u00a0a sample off the bed\u00c2\u00a0perfectly) that you’d be forgiven for thinking that it is a kosher Pottery Barn product. Except that mine is better quality. Really. On closer inspection of the bed (and after doing all of the hard work on the desk), I discovered that the ‘slat-work’ on the bed is actually just thin strips of wood glued onto a single piece of board, whereas mine is all tongue-and-grooved. Plus, mine is all held together with actual joints (lots of mortise and tenon joints, and half-blind dovetails on the drawer), whereas the bed is really just screwed together. The only screws on mine are the ones holding the top on.\u00c2\u00a0 The way I look at it, this desk is heirloom quality<\/em>. I fully expect Finn to be carting this with him when he goes off to college (secured through all the hard work he’d better start putting in, sat at this desk).<\/p>\n