Juan initially wanted a desk. A larger desk than what he currently had. One that was sturdy so that he could put his IT stuff on it. “Sure,” I said. I could do that. Then he wanted it to have an adjustable height. “Sorry, can’t do that,” I told him- I don’t work with metal and don’t have the skillset to do that with wood. He encouraged me to research how to do it as a way to build my skillset but I still said no. He gave in and accepted the fact that he would need to pick a height and be ok with it.
But then, as I was getting him to narrow down the dimensions he wanted, he pointed to my workshop table (one that we had purchased from a big box store) and said he wanted it “that big”. My table was 6 foot long. “Just buy another one of those”, I lashed back.
“Nooooo,” he said. “I want you to build it. I want to see the mahogany grains.” I know. Weird. But it’s what he says when he’s making fun of how excited I get over a beautiful wood grain. I initially wanted to say no since I had never made a table longer than 4 foot and wasn’t sure I had the clamps to be able to do that properly. I reasoned with myself that I at least had a work surface that was big enough for the glue up!
So, I made the table for him. Turns out, I didn’t have the proper clamps (although my dad later pointed out that it is simply a matter of buying the right length pipe to go in his pipe clamps that he gave me…) but I found a way to make it work and I must say, I even surprised myself with this one. I felt the table was a little boring after the initial build of the frame so I found a way to jazz it up- I did my first inlays!
When it came time to work on the top, I was struggling figuring out how to glue up pieces that weren’t 6 long together. I knew that end grain-end grain glue ups were the weakest and couldn’t find a decent video anywhere of someone doing what I was trying to do. Of course! Since I had decided to use African Mahogany for the inlays, I gathered up some other cutoffs I had lying around and used those to add some color to the top.
After the table was complete, we set it up in his office and figured out where he would want it. He asked rather nonchalantly about drilling holes in the top to mount his monitors. I felt myself go weak in the knees but tried to hide my shock since it was his table. Juan wisely picked up on how I was feeling and assured me he would find a different way to mount the monitors. I later posted my table and Juan’s monitor mounting idea in a woodworking group online and got lots of offers for divorce attorneys, ways to smack him in the head and how to remind him that the table for me is a piece of artwork!