We're So Close!!

This was me, the other day, having a tea and redesigning the desktop.  It felt so good to move all the pieces into place and get rid of the ever-present drop cloth.  I needed a desk to work on my redesign of the desk, so I set up two pieces of plywood.

Dave fixed the drawer on the Crazy Case by shaving off 1/8" of wood from underneath the drawer glide.  She really is a crazy-looking thing, but the drawer does glide!

We completely finished Slats:

 The shelves glide like good sliding shelves, the printer and CD player fit perfectly, and the drawer face is actually painted, though it wasn't in this photo.  And the drawer also glides like a good sliding drawer.  (I am totally over my loathing of this piece, and now I feel even kind of affectionate for poor, dumpy little Slats.  She may be ugly, but I think she means well.)

Our options for construction of the top included:

It was Dave's idea that won the day.  We went with "8 Oak Boards" but with a little modification...

And now there is no weak point at the center since each and every joint (except the one in the back) is supported by Slats.  The weak point lies in my ability to lay things out square.  More on that later.

Remember how Slats wobbles?  Well guess what!  The floor isn't level (it slopes up into the corner, surprise!), so there actually isn't a wobble now!  Almost like we did it on purpose!

So back to the desktop.  We went with red oak boards from, um, one of the two big-box stores (I honestly have no idea which one).  One of the 8" ones was roughed up along one edge, so they gave us 25% off, and I attached it damaged-side-down.  Score!

The check-out lady had to call to get the discount verified...she claimed I was buying "a damaged redwood board."  Close enough.

Now, I bought two big clamps for this portion of the build, knowing the ones I had at home wouldn't be big enough to clamp all 4 boards of the desktop.  I did not realize that even the new clamps wouldn't be big enough to clamp our interesting corner construction:

 So I glued/clamped 4 of the 7 boards, laid it out to trace, cut it...

 ...and then glued/clamped the rest.

As I told Dave, this portion of the project was probably just beyond my current skill set.  As it turns out, when I laid the first set of boards to trace, I didn't have the two legs of the desktop perfectly square...so the left side of the center piece is juuust a little gappy.  And there really is no way to fix it, since we intended to stain the desktop, not paint.  Any jimmy-rigged fix would be visible and ugly.

Besides, it's not that bad, is it?

So obviously the next step is going to be to level the support units (Slats, Crazy Case, and the Other One).  Since, you know, the floor's not level.  There's already a 3/4" piece of scrap lifting Slats's toes, but she's still tilted forward and, surprisingly, to the left.  Then, when I get home this coming week, we're gonna stain and finish the desktop! !! YAY!  We're SO excited to finally (almost) have a realio trulio desk!

**But then we've gotta build hutches and extra support to hold the extra weight.  We may retire on this, our first job.  Still, though, so good to be nearly finished!