My New Desk {From Tree to Furniture}

As I sit here at my new desk using our computer I am super thankful for this lovely place to enjoy and use for some of my work. I feel very blessed. Above you can see a sneak peak of it but I thought I would then tell you the story of the making of my desk....

The Tree, My Dad and his Chainsaw.

When we were clearing our land to build the house there was one lovely tall pine tree that needed to be cut down. It was so big and tall that the guys elected to have my dad (the most experienced at cutting down trees) do the cutting of it. After it was cut down it was so lovely and straight we thought it would be nice to make some lumber out of it. So Dad hauled it over to his house on his big trailer.

 To Dad's sawmill it went.

 Dad cut it into boards while the boys and I helped in any way that we could.

 We had to take the lumber and stack it neatly in a pile with little sticks in between the stacks so that the lumber could dry.

It dried for around a year. Then we used Dad's planer and planed the boards to a uniform size and made them smoother.

Now they were ready to go back to our house.

We had wanted to make a desk to go in this bump out in my office. I had been thinking about how it could be done. I then discussed it with my dad (the carpenter that I am thankful to be able to consult with!) and he drew up a rough idea of how we could do it.

And then Ken and I got to work. This sort of project is not really Ken's expertise but he did a great job of figuring things out and cutting things for me. I then got to do a bunch of sanding! I also varnished all the pieces.

Then Ken, with Jonathan's help, put them all in place.

We left the raw edge (well I did sand it some and then varnish it but still you can see the bark colors) on the front of the desk. I love that rustic touch! I have a shelf for storage underneath my desk.

It is so lovely to get things organized!

We put shelves above too. I like having all the space to store my vases! The shelf brackets were a good deal because I was able to get them free after rebate from Menards.

I love being able to look out the window while I work on the computer.

My homemade baskets fit perfectly on the lower shelf. These baskets were made out of paper grocery bags, you can see my instructions for making them at this post.

A full view of the desk. It is nice to have room for both the computer and sewing machine at the same time.

  This desk is obviously very simple but it is very special to me because we made it ourselves from a tree that was on our property. I love having natural simple furniture like that and I feel super blessed to get to enjoy this desk.

  Have you ever made furniture? Or do you think it would be fun to try? What have you or what would you like to make?

  By the way - The desk was obviously pretty inexpensive. All we had to buy (other than the brackets for the shelves which we got the money back on) was varnish. We bought a gallon for around $30 and used about 1/3 of it.