Skip to main content

The Adventure of Making Our Desk

 

I love salvaged wood pieces. Shopping at Restoration Hardware however was NOT in our budget. I was driving back home to Rochester, NY for Memorial Day weekend, and I had an idea SET that I. Would. Find. Wood... Old wood... Side of the road, distressed, water damaged beautiful old wood! And I did. :)

It was pretty fun actually driving through Amish country in PA and weird small towns, talking to people and asking around. I ended up finding a towing company that was selling firewood by the road, but they had wood planks in the pile. So I asked, and turns out the owner's brother makes big shipping crates, and he had a whole barn-full of old wood from his brother! He gave it to me for free, and even cut it down for me so it would fit in my car. Check it out!






I brought it home to my dad, and drew up some plans. I decided making a desk would look the best, and we needed something pretty small for the tight space. It was hard with the warped wood, but we made the desk...



...and every desk needs shelves, so we saved some of the thicker pieces to use there. I wanted to use copper pipe to hold up the shelves, and I drew up plans for my dad of how I wanted to wrap the copper around the wood.



We cut the pipe to the exact sizes, connected it with elbows and flanges, and made two brackets like the one above. I also decided to buy a little extra pipe and make a copper curtain rod too! The next step after bringing it all back to VA was the very difficult task of properly hanging the brackets on the wall, and sliding the wood through. Patrick and I managed to finagle it somehow, and I'm SO happy with how it turned out. Here's a shot of the finished product:


And here's a couple more pictures of my dad making the desk. My favorite carpenter in the world! 


Love,
NAFASI




Popular posts from this blog

The Brightest Kitchen in Kigali!

I'm so excited to share with everyone my latest kitchen interior design project, and the bright young woman who lives here!  Claire is a neighbor, a friend, and a client of NAFASI! She had just decided she was ready to settle into her Kigali house, but wasn't quite satisfied with it as her and her son's home . Luckily Claire called on NAFASI, had some great visions of what home meant to her, and we opened up her space into the cheery welcoming kitchen you see now!  This is how it used to look: Can you believe it!?!? Claire worked with her landlord, as she is renting the house, to share costs for the renovation. It was win-win for everyone! A lot of landlords are ready to make renovations on older homes, and willing to pay for the renovation costs that come with it. Claire was responsible for the interior design costs. This way the owner is able to get free design, and the value increases greatly on their home, and the tenant gets the home they actually ...

We've Waited Long Enough!

It is now time for the big reveal!!!!! I have had such a huge internal debate over when I was ready to share finished photos of our home in Kigali. While most of our friends would have said it was completely done 6 months ago (!) I still don't actually feel like it's really finished.   I'm still changing up porch furniture, debating curtains, and I'm not quite pleased with the legs of the island yet- to name a few!  However,  it is time to get the photos out there, and to move on with all of the other Kigali homes and projects I've been working on and need to share with you too! I will be sure to update the blog with all of my own home changes as I make them. And you know I will! ;) So let's take a brief home tour of only the best shots for now! Starting with our front porch. I hope you like it!!! Keep in mind, I could do this for you and your home too. ;) ( www.nafasiinteriors.com ) I added these breezey curtains for a vacation-y relaxing vibe....

!!!!

I'm currently in Mafinga. we just got off the bus, and are staying here overnight before we get to Mafinga, the village that this volunteer lives in! Kikwete the pres is supposed to be speaking, so we might see him at some point. we stayed in morogoro the last 2 nights, and had a lot of fun!... we got to shop at a real grocery store!.. i got to eat ice cream, and bought doritoes and a twix!.... so much fun!... and we went to this bar and got pizza for dinner!!!... the other night we all did kareoke and hung out at this other bar, and the next morning i had only the 3rd hangover ive ever had in my life! So anyways... now that were done in class, i havent been learning swahili every day, and it feels weird.. we are spending this week shadowing a volunteer, Ross, so im really excited to see how he lives, and his work and everything.... and then after a week of shadowing, we go to dar es salaam, where im going to try to buy a new digital camera, and where we hear our site announcements...