Have I Ever Mentioned How Much I Hate Sanding?

I vowed to never sand again, after sanding the girls' entire room, in the rv. Well, I lied. My Mom acquired a desk that fits our specs perfectly. You see, the drawers are "false". They are just the faces of the drawers, and the faces are glued shut. The mounting brackets and all the hoopla that was originally holding the drawers in before, are now gone. The back of the desk where the drawers had originally been, is now gone. The area that once housed drawers, is now going to house our litter box. In the girls' room, there is a wall. Yea, yea, "obviously" you say. Well, the same wall that houses our second RV entrance door, also has a secret outdoor access point. You can't see it right now because, when they converted our RV Toyhauler to a non-toy hauling RV, they walled over the access point. We are going to line the opened up back of the desk with the outdoor access point, cut through the wall to reopen it up again and Voila!, a super easy way to change the litter box from the outside. We're just going to have to cut in a Kitty door on the inside wall of the desk, to the left of where you sit under it, and they'll be able to go in and do their business.

Anyways, enough about our boys' call of nature. It is a perfect desk, but to be entirely honest with you, when I was originally given it, it was beat to "you know what". The top of it was all scratched up...or carved up...i'd rather use the latter term. The sides, leg spindles and base of it were all banged up as well. I got the bright idea to bust out the vibe hand-sander and go to town on the "easy access" parts, i.e. the top, drawer fronts...basically anything long and flat. I sanded with the hand-sander for about 3 1/2 hours yesterday afternoon until my in-laws tore me away from the desk to shower and eat, lol. Today, however, was a completely different sanding story.

After I ran out of places to sand with the electric sander, I had to continue forth sanding by hand...this time with no awesome power tool to help me out. THAT took another good 7 hours. It is incredibly difficult to sand spindles by the way!!! 5 of those 7 hours were spent just sanding in every crack and curve of those stupid freaking legs!

The last two hours, I pulled my eldest out to help me. I told her she'd appreciate her new desk a LOT more if she actually put in some work on it as well. She busted her butt and I gotta say, that for a 7 year old, she did a REALLY good job! She took quite a few breaks, but just for 2 minutes, then came right back and sanded some more. My Mom showed up about an hour before I finished and sanded a few edges for me and between the 3 of us, we had it done pretty quickly. I uber appreciated their help! Thanks you two! Also, thanks Ma, for watching my li'l booger, yet again, for me today...and yesterday, too! Without such an incredible support system, all this work would never have happened.

Anyways, my eldest loves her new desk, she can't wait to Homeschool on it for the rest of First grade, and I think the Kitties (my boys) will appreciate it too. It was a major pain to sand that whole thing, but it was worth it in the end.

I need to Tack towel it this weekend...sometime...and find out from my Hubby if I have to sand it with a finer grit i.e.220? before I apply the stain. I should mention here that I sanded it with 100-grit sandpaper.

It ended up a super light color wood(and yes, it's solid wood, no particle board anywhere in that bad boy), so any time you see a DARK brown, that was the original stain color of the entire desk. I never took a before pic because I was on a roll sanding, and it honestly didn't even cross my mind til this morning. Duh!  By then, I was finished with all the big sanding and only had the spindles, cracks and crevices left. Anyways, enough talking. Here's the pics.

 Here's the back of the desk with the back knocked out.

The whole desk was the dark brown color...only super beaten up.

 Here I am sanding off the ugly dark brown color.

 Here's the middle of the spindle done.

 Here's one whole spindle done, and it only took 2 1/2 hours to finish it! Thank goodness there are only 2!

 Here's my oldest kiddo gettin' her hands roughed up and workin' really hard! She's always been a Tomboy.

Here's my youngest kiddo sneakin' in the pic, she tried sanding earlier today, lol. I have an awesome sunburn now, by the way. Stocking up on sunblock tomorrow!

 TADA! All finished and lookin' mighty fine...if I don't mind sayin' so myself!

P.S. My oldest picked out some new knobs and drawer pulls that have flowers and leaves on them to go with her whole forest theme. Now, we just need to argue over what color to stain it?

P.P.S. If you know a faster way to accomplish the sanding that took me 10 1/2 hours to achieve, I don't wanna hear it. Please. I might just implode at the sound of such news.