Someone painted this poor desk brown and gave it to an op shop. I bought it for $60 and restored it
Someone painted this poor desk brown and gave it to an op shop. I bought it for $60 and restored it
Here is what it looked like when I got it home:
Fully stripped back:
And restored to it's former glory:
So, "op shop"... are you Australian?
Also, what wood is that? Something local to Australia? And is that top really solid 8/4??!?!?!?!? If so, I mourn your lower-back's sacrifice in the service of well-done furniture refinishing.
Yes, Australian. Op shops are Australia's thrift stores.
Yes the thing was solid grain timber throughout. Even the drawer bases. Thats why when I saw it I knew I had to save it. Thing weighed a ton. I needed to rig up a crane system with ratchet straps to safely get it out of my camper van by myself.
I dont know what kind of wood it was though. Something fairly soft and heavily pitted though.
Australian lumber is a whole different world. Maybe some sort of blackwood or a eucalyptus? That figuring doesn't look like any pines or cypresses I know of.
Regardless, it looks like whoever made that was not fucking around. That thing looks to be built like a brick shithouse. They even alternated the growth rings on the top, though I understand that only helps a little and can result in "rippling" when a consistent cup might have been controlled equally well; still, it's a classic technique. You may want to wax those slides if the drawers bind at all, and if the pulls don't look original, I might find something else, but that's just an opinion.
Meanwhile, I'm over here trying to decide how much desk I can build with a single sheet of plywood and a 2x8, and whether it would look any better than my 15 year old Ikea trestle table that was cheap when I bought it.
Beautiful!
Really well done. It looks very nice!