sale of the century

My brother went to an estate sale a few weeks ago with an unbelievable number of bargains. Seriously unbelievable. He and my mom and Loni scored a table, a ton of tools, a china cabinet, etc. But the most unbelievable deal of all was an old and enormous desk -- for $15! Showing evidence of the mutant power formed by the combination of my mom's inability to resist a bargain and my dad's compulsive pack rat nature, he bought the thing, loaded it up, and brought it home. He didn't have any place to put it (it would take up half of his room!) and he didn't actually know anyone who needed a desk, so it went out to my dad's shop, a place with a very low turnaround, if you know what I mean.

Luckily, Lon happened to mention that they hit the yard sale mother lode. I've been looking for a new desk for a couple of years now, off and on. I definitely needed more work space, but man, those things are expensive! So I waited, and watched Craigslist. And waited some more. But now, friends, the wait is over and the price was right. I might even go so far as to say this was the best $15 ever spent by anyone, ever. Yes, that's right: two evers. Check this thing out:



Looks fairly normal, right? Aside from the size (the top is 60 inches by 35 inches, much bigger than my old desk) maybe. It has a middle drawer, three drawers on one side, and a cabinet on the other. When we opened it up, we found some interesting surprises.



This is the cabinet side. It's got a spring-loaded shelf that pops out and up (I say "pops" because that is what I assume it did at one time; now, it kind of groans and protests and requires a lot of pulling) to make a typewriter stand. There were even holes for the cord! The plan was to put the computer tower in the cabinet, but once we discovered this fascinating feature, I couldn't bear to rip it out. But we came up with the perfect solution, and now the typewriter shelf is home to the printer.



The drawers are really deep, and have the usual complement of partitions, but the bottom drawer had these cool wooden dividers for file folders. And the very very best part about the drawers is that there's some kind of lever system that locks all of the side drawers when the middle drawer is closed. It's the perfect defense against a baby who loves nothing more than a good drawer to gleefully empty.

It was a really long day breaking everything down and getting it all set up again, even with my dad and J sparing us by hauling it over here, but here's the finished product: