Progress on the lair...

Progress on the lair...  By “lair” I mean my office in the barn, of course.  Yesterday I was suffering more than usual from a lack of sleep.  I was up at 2:30 am, and out in the part of the barn where I need to work on the fan project there is no light and no heat – so I didn't start yesterday.  Instead I worked in my office to put my desk together – another long-delayed project.  The result you can see at right.  There's a story behind this desk...

Originally we'd ordered this desk for Debbie's office, in our house.  At the time we ordered it (almost two years ago), I carefully measured the dimensions needed and sent them to the craftsman who was building that furniture.  The desk and a matching table in her office are made from black locust by a guy in Georgia.  Well, unbeknownst to me, as the craftsman was working he proposed making the desk bigger – much – bigger, with no increase in price.  He made that proposal to Debbie, through the vendor.  Debbie said “yes”, not realizing that the size was a critical factor.  I never heard about this little exchange.  We took that desk upstairs to her office, after taking it apart to negotiate all the corners.  I only realized the size was off after we'd gotten it all up there and the delivery guys had left.  That desk is heavy – I'd guess over 200 lbs all assembled.  Realizing that it wasn't going to fit was quite disheartening.  Finding out it was all our fault (and not the craftsman's) was even more disheartening – that desk was not cheap.  And it wasn't going to fit in Debbie's office, no matter what magic I tried to do.  Dang it!  There was nothing for it but to order a new desk for Debbie.  That left this giant desk with no home.  The only obvious things to do were to either keep it for me, or to try to sell it.  We decided to keep it.  So I disassembled the desk again, enlisted the aid of my brother Scott, and the two of us moved it, piece by piece, over to my office.  What a struggle that was!  It spent the last year disassembled in my office, right in the middle of the chaotic room.

So yesterday I reassembled it and moved it into place where I'd been using a folding table as a desk.  That's what you see in the photo.  It's beautiful, isn't it?  And it took me all day!