Old Desk To Be Transformed Into Kitchen

My stepmother asked me if I could take away this desk. A house guest had dragged it off the street and said he would come back and get it but never did. So inconsiderate. It's been sitting here for so long the varnish has pealed off from the afternoon sun streaming through the window of the garage.

I looked at the drawers and decided to use them in building a kitchen for the tiny house. I was tickled by the idea of such a transformative repurposing project. And I had read a convincing blog post about some remodelers sealing a wood counter with a product called Waterlox that held up terrifically. I had always wanted a wood counter in the kitchen.

In designing my kitchen I kept in mind all the very simple kitchens I had seen in my travels overseas that involved nothing more than a counter over some rudimentary shelves. All the things that North American kitchens seem to insist on like flush cabinet doors and european hinges, not to mention in ceiling task lighting every two feet are not necessary and just make the building of a kitchen a high end precision affair. Nor did I need drawers. Drawers are a disorganizing machine in my experience jostling everything about every time you open them and drawer organizers take up too much space. I would just hang up my utensils. But I did like having drawers in my bathroom and since the bathroom would be right next to the kitchen I began to design a unit that would incorporate a bathroom facing drawer unit.

I also decided to do away with the kitchen sink because cutting a hole in the counter subtracts from your counter space unless you make a sink cover which involves more precision work, plus you loose space underneath where the sink must be plumbed. Plumbing being another level of complexity. And if the sink wasn't big enough to wash my biggest pot it would only frustrate me. Others have said the same thing about their too small sink and moved dishwashing outside. I moved the dishwashing to the bathroom, which was essentially a shower pan, where I thought I would have a drop down wire shelf to support a dishpan or two or three in classic Thai farmstyle. I would have another shelf to dry the dishes on.

When Tim was here sealing the house I had him cut the top off the desk with his saws-all. (I could have looked for the screws and simply unscrewed it with less damage to the case, but I wanted to save time.) I then knocked the back panel off to separate the drawer units and unbolted them from the leg beam. 

While I was thinking about the layout of the kitchen I stripped the remaining varnish off the desk with my Silent Paint Remover. Basically a heating unit that works like a heat gun but covers more surface. When the varnish bubbles I quickly scrape. The trick was not leaving it so long that the bubbles got scorched black and left a mark. What varnish remained I got off with steal wool and a little sanding.

Once I had my measurements which included measuring all the pots and large equipment I wanted to store I began building my cabinets from doors. I used up my remaining doors on one, but there were three on craigslist for free just waiting for me to come get them. One was an old one with thick wood in it that would be sturdy. I had to do some scrubbing to get the pealing brown latex paint off it, but underneath was a serviceable white gloss. I took the trouble to fill the open cut ends with lumber because I was going to screw the pieces together at the edges. (I tried the Kreg Jig, but it didn't work with hollow core doors. It made it difficult to get the pieces flush and just made holes in the door skin.) For the top and bottom and the shelves inside the taller cabinet I cut down a stash of school room desk size pieces I had on hand that I had built to make sets for a play two years ago. This would save them going to landfill for they were too small for anything else. 

To build out the space where the drawers were to meet the front edge of the supporting cabinet, I made pantry size shelves from my stash of 4 ft, 1" by 12" pine boards that had been shelving. Another freebie from craigslist. There was enough left over to make frames for cabinet doors. I also saved the pull out desk extension shelves and cut one to fit my tall cabinet leaving the other where it was in the drawer unit. All this took most of the month to execute, but so far so good.

The desk top is five feet long, but I decided to cut it down to 4 1/2 feet to fit the space and leave room for a coat closet/broom cupboard. That's the challenge of designing for a small space. If you want something you have to subtract the space from something else. I also cut the depth down from the traditional 24" to 22" so it wouldn't protrude too much from the ladder to the loft. The only reason to keep to the traditional 24" is to accommodate most sinks. And if you don't have canisters sitting directly on the counter you won't miss those two inches. I tried all this out by measuring things in my current kitchen.

Building The Closet

I have installed several closet organizers in my day and lots of shelves so this was the easiest project for me to start with. Actually I started with the floor of the loft so I could install the closet. I removed the thin carpeting which had been installed mostly for show I suspect to give a finished look for the photos. It was stapled in. I was glad to find a good enough smooth surface plywood underneath though it was dirty with boot prints and had some gouges. After scrubbing it down with Murphy's wood soap I stained it with used motor oil which gave it a nice walnut color finish. Used motor oil is also supposed to be an insecticide because of the bits in it that accumulate from being in the engine. It's an old farmer's trick used to protect wood outdoors. I had used it before on furniture I built and it had stood the test of time. And no it is not flammable once the fumes evaporate. At least not anymore flammable than commercial stain. The smell evaporated quickly.

In planning the closet I started by assessing my current clothing inventory, doing some much needed weeding and measuring the amount of hang space taken up by my everyday clothes. I cut that by a few inches and came up with 36" which would allow shelving at either side to hold pants and t-shirts. I had it in mind to build the closet at the back of the loft. Most tiny house people don't put their closet in the loft probably because it is too difficult to get dressed up there, but I was strapped for space downstairs.

I built the closet sides from a hollow core door I had on hand. Doors are my favorite building material. They are light and strong, have factory finished edges, can be found for free and usually come with a finish already. The thick edges take up space, but look nice and make the pieces easy to screw together. Once cut into pieces the cavity of the hollow core is exposed at the cut edge. I usually fill up this opening with lumber cut to fit between the two door faces, but it wasn't necessary in this case because I wasn't going to attach anything to those edges just have a batten at top and bottom to hold the uprights in place. So I just taped over the opening with brown paper packaging tape I was almost going to throw out. I didn't want bugs to find a home inside the door and no one would ever see the brown tape.

The most challenging part turned out the be beveling the edge of the shelf that would sit on top of these closet walls as it would have to fit under the eaves of the roofline. I consulted the internet and learned how to cut an acute angle on the table saw by standing the piece on its end. I had to make many tries to get close.

I made the shelves from 1/8" plywood I had on hand that had been used as wall panelling. This was thin but at 12" wide they would not flex and would serve to support the weight of 3 pairs of pants. I cut the ply into shelves and spacers to support the shelves; standing upright the 1/8" would support the shelf while the one above it would keep it in place. Such construction might seem as sturdy as a house of cards and bore some resemblance to building with cards, but once glued together to an upright piece it was quite rigid. I had never tried this glue up construction before, but since it was my closet this was my chance.

Before I glued it up I realized that I didn't have enough space for the narrow t-shirt shelves. I hadn't accounted for the 1 1/2" thickness of the doors. I had to cut an inch off the shelves which cramped my folded up pants, but I could live with it (or just get narrow pants as I did for the photo). I had an old closet pole I cut to fit and in my dad's stash I found a package of new closet pole brackets I liked better than my paint covered used ones. The entire closet was completed in just over six hours and all for free.

The closet would not be my only storage for clothes. I have a chest of drawers from my childhood that I had hand painted during a phase of painting faux finishes. I couldn't face weeding out my collection of designer board shorts stored in it, plus the top drawer held all my jewelry and hair things and the surface was my dressing table. I could make room for it.