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.