Giant Desk with Painful Results

I watch a blog called junkrestore.com and one day as I browsed through I noticed the author, Tara, was selling a desk that looked quite old and had a true primitive shape. Sort of blocky, with a large, deep surface. The price was great and I knew I could fix it and turn a nice profit.

So she very kindly delivered it to my house, even though I happened to be gone when she got there. My 12 year old daughter helped her. In retrospect, I cannot fathom how two little women managed this thing.

I got home and loaded it onto my furniture dolly, or as I like to call it, my second husband, and started dragging it through the yard to my work area/back porch. I hadn't yet discovered the magic of the strap that this dolly has, so the desk was riding bare back all the way. It tipped and tethered but I managed to get there without incident.

Then as I am attempting to gently ease it down, I lost control, and it seemed to suddenly become ten times heavier then it had been a moment before. My nine year old son, Ethan, was standing nearby and it fell, top down, onto the top of his foot, near his ankle. The darn thing didn't even pause in its descent. It slammed hard onto the concrete and Ethan proceeded to scream like a siren for a full sixty seconds.

I picked him up and took him in the house, lest a neighbor think someone was being tortured, and gingerly removed his sock. It looked bad... real bad. For the first time since I became a mother 9 years ago, I realized I was going to have to take a child to the emergency room.

I loaded him up in the van and drove to Banner Ironwood, a brand spanking new facility serving the greater san tan valley area. I was surprised at the ... well the customer service. They were friendly and the male receptionist did not even breathe the word "insurance" just gently clipped Ethans bracelet on and sent us to the comfy waiting room.

After an hour of waiting and x-rays ( and a pretty nurse bringing him PB&j and an orthopedic nurse doing a Patch Adams impersonation, making Ethan smile for the first time since we got there) they determined that the bones were sound and that he needed to stay off of it and wear a splint and use crutches. He could not have been more delighted. Especially since he was flying high on Tylenol with Codiene ...

I digress. I mustered up the courage to press forward, despite serious fears that my hobby was going to hurt my children, and came up with a game plan.

I decided to keep the weathered siding and simply brush it lightly with some cream latex paint I found in the oops paint section of Home Depot for $1. Then I sanded and mended the top, stained it a dark brown, with no red in it, and added a coat of high gloss, oil based poly. The contrast of the smooth, yet still rustic top and the super weathered distressed sides came out nice.

I posted it on Craigslist and it sold the next day.

My son has forgiven me, but has since developed a fear of large furniture.