Previous posts will attest how my wife and I are big into restoring old furniture and appliances back to life. For years our next door neighbor was an elderly woman in her 90's. My wife took her shopping and ran errands for her when she was forced to give up her driving abilities. She had gone through three husbands and all of them worked for the railroad. Near the end, she gave my wife a lot of items of interest. They included a pot belly stove that was used to heat the caboose of a train, some old locomotive wheels, kerosene lanterns, and other train related stuff.. One of the items was a rusty hulk of what used to be a sewing machine base. The actual machine was gone, but the undercarriage was there. It sat outside in the elements for almost twenty years before we decided to do something with it..
I used a steel brush to knock off the biggest part of the rust, and then I went to a steel bristled brush on the end of a drill gun. That did a great job and, in some cases, took it right down to the metal. The foot treadle was frozen in place, but that was okay since it was not going to be used for sewing. We decided to convert it to a desk. While I was working on the metal base Momma was building a desk top to replace the sewing machine cabinet..
She used some pine planks as a base and, to make it smooth enough to be used as a desk, she filled in the cracks with small dowel rods. An electric sander smoothed off the dowels and made it really slick. We could have painted or dark stained the top, but thought that might overpower the base,..which we decided to paint a crimson maroon..
Yes, we did Google 'Farm & Ranch' and could find no background on anything sewing machine related. The maroon paint claimed to be a satin finish, but it came out a bit more glossy than this photo shows. I used two cans of Rust-oleum paint and the spray made easy work to the tight and hard-to-reach spots on the machine. I believe it to be made from cast iron due to the weight of the undercarriage, which is about 40-45 pounds..
Momma really did a super job on the desktop, alternating light and dark stain on the pine planks. She used a jigsaw to cut out the sides and backstop of the desk.. and just in case someone wants to check out the underside of the desk..
She made sure to stain it also. That way it doesn't look like some shade-tree operation. Speaking of the stain, Momma didn't like any of the stains we have accumulated over the years, so she mixed some of them together to come up with the final shade. Not too dark and not too light. The whole project was her idea so I just made some suggestions,..and did the heavy lifting.
As a last minute touch...She highlighted the brand name by touching it with some gold paint. Since it is such an unknown brand, we thought might as well play it up to attract attention.
Momma tries it out for size and proper height. It seems like a natural fit but we will not be keeping it for ourselves. It has already been promised.
The desk will be donated to the Think Pink auction coming up this Fall. Think Pink does a lot of good work in the fight against breast cancer in the area of North Texas and Southern Oklahoma. It will go to the highest bidder and we are hoping someone will appreciate it as much as we do. We both think it came out super and will make a valued addition to someone's home office or den.
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