Perhaps My Favorite Thing Ever

When I found out the New Normal meant I would be working out of the house instead of from a corporate office, I knew I wanted to make my office space one I loved. It didn't need to be big, it didn't need to be  fancy, but it had to be convenient and it had to be, well, me.

That's why nothing seemed to fit (literally) when I looked for a new desk to anchor my new space in the kitchen's unused breakfast nook. The nook is only 60 inches from front wall to back wall, and all of the desks in stores were either too large, too run-of-the-mill, or too Louis XIV for my taste. I was feeling a little battered by the process when Husband made an offer: How about if he made a desk for me? He offered to use a set of antique sewing machine legs I'd gotten on eBay for another project, and some wood that had been harvested from a century-old oak tree that fell on my parents' farm.

I won't go into the mechanics of what went on between that offer and last night, because they aren't the point of this post. I won't talk about the original set of legs missing a caster and the quest for another antique sewing machine.

The beautifully scrolled machine itself went to a museum in my home town.

I won't detail the elation when we found butcher block countertops at Menards that were exactly the right size for the desk top, which would have a pull-out keyboard drawer. 

I won't talk about the weeks the components of the desk spent upside down on the living room floor as plans were drawn up and measurements taken and "Will the trackball fit?" discussed.

I will leave alone the technical setbacks, especially the somewhat fraught discussion of physics and angles and whatnot when Husband discovered the legs needed to be braced or I would have a precariously wobbly work surface and was likely to end up with a lap full of computer components. 

Work space, keyboard space, and room left for Marie Antoinette.

I'll keep private our jokes that if he were being paid at his normal hourly rate for this labor of love he could have bought an original Louis XIV and still had change left over. 

Instead, I'll talk about last night, when I moved the old church table out of the nook office and Husband and a friend brought the new desk up from the basement workshop. The drawer that holds the keyboard slides out smoothly, and the oak front closes as precisely as one would expect from someone with Husband's attention to detail. It fits perfectly under some of my favorite artwork, including Much Older Sister's annual Christmas calendar and a wonderful print by this wonderful artist. 

It's just a desk, but it is new and old, beautiful and practical, designed and assembled by a person I love. 

It's the perfect symbol of my New Normal, and it may be my favorite thing ever.