Money Money Money

Ready to see my mystery office desktop? The one John and I have been working so hard on for the past few weeks? And learn how we did it?

I mean, I know *I'm* excited.

Here, I'll ease you in slowly. It all started....[dramatic pause]...WITH THESE:

DUN DUN DUUUUUNNNN!!

And it became...[more dramatic pausing]...THIS:

Ta-DA!

Ok, that's not the best shot. Here, try this one:

Oooh. Aaaah.


Now, on to the photo-intensive tutorial/progress shots! If you want to try this yourself, or just see how insane *we* are, keep scrolling.

First, if you want your top to have any shine to it, you're going to need to polish up some of the pennies you're using. Here's a quick way to do that:

Fill your bowl about a quarter of the way with pennies, pour in a little Tarn-X, and then swish and shake the bowl around over the sink (in case of splashes) to evenly expose the coins to the liquid. This only takes a matter of seconds. When they seem evenly shined up, dump the lot into a colander in the sink and rinse well.

From there, dump the batch onto an old towel to dry them:

I polished roughly half of the pennies I planned to use, so there would still be plenty of color variation. Still, it would also look amazing to have the entire surface polished, so the choice is up to you.

Next you're going to need a surface to adhere the pennies to. John built this desktop out of plywood, and then painted it flat black:

This fits in a cubby between two bookshelves, so only the front edge is rounded prettily. (Routers: very useful.) Oh, and those pennies aren't glued down; we were just testing out the pattern.

To begin, start with the oh-so-important front edge:

John clamped a long metal ruler down to use as a straight edge, which I used as a guide to glue on the rounded pennies.

And how do you round those pennies, you ask?

Well, we used these:


That's an old titanium ring of John's with a bit of electrical tape wrapped inside. After a bit of trial and error, John found that clamping a penny inside the ring with pliers made just the right curve to fit the desk edge:

However, be warned, ye of lesser hand strength: this is HARD. I tried with all my might and couldn't get the penny to budge, much less bend. Even John wore a heavy work glove to protect his palm while working.

NOTE: If you don't want to (or can't) bend pennies for the edge, you still fill the flat top of your surface with pennies. So don't get hung up on the bending thing: it adds a nice touch, but is not really necessary.

Once the first line of bent pennies are glued down (ah, Gorilla glue, my old friend...) it's a simple, if time-consuming, matter to fill the rest of the desktop:

This wouldn't have taken me quite so long if I weren't arranging the pennies in a non-random random arrangement. That is to say, it *looks* random, but only by design. I mixed the various colors and designs just so, to get it all consistent.

I kept a small bowl of "special" pennies on hand to mix in at regular intervals. These included wheat pennies, prettily corroded pennies, and the various new back designs from 2009 and '10. I even have a few Canadian pennies in there, plus one from the Bahamas (which has the prettiest penny design, really) almost smack in the middle.

To keep the coins from shifting, you really do need to glue each and every one down. However, it doesn't take much glue to do it:

I was about to apologize for the blur when I realized John took this shot. (John! Get in here and apologize!)

Almost done!

The pennies hanging off the edge were for John to trim off with a Dremel later.

At this point John took over with the Dremel and heavy-duty snips. He trimmed the edges and cut penny slivers to fill in the small spaces.


As you can see, for the corners he had to cut the pennies on the seam *and* bend them to fit the curve. Not easy. This all took him about two nights. (By the time the desktop was completely covered with pennies, we'd been working on it for about 6 nights.)

Next comes the scariest part of all: covering your top in bartop epoxy.


We set our desk on sawhorses in a small room with the floor covered in heavy plastic sheeting. Because the epoxy takes a few days to cure, you need an area with minimal dust, bugs, and pet hair blowing around (close your room's air vent, if you can). The plastic covering the floor is also *extremely* important. You'll see why in a sec.

Here goes nothin'...

You may notice our epoxy is tinted a golden orange. This is not intentional: it's just old. Heh. However, since the stuff is so expensive (well over $100), we decided to use it anyway. Waste not, save money, right? Besides, the tint just makes the pennies slightly more golden, which actually looks rather nice:

Once all the epoxy is poured on, it's time to start tipping the desk slightly to get the epoxy to spread out to all the edges.

See why that plastic is important? You really, REALLY don't want this stuff on your carpet.

"Somebody blows their nose and you want a sample?"

Ahem. Once all the edges are coated, you can use a small spoon or spatula to scoop some of the epoxy off the plastic on the floor and back onto the top:

The epoxy self-levels, but we had to go over that curved edge several times to make sure it filled in all the gaps. (Even so, our front edge is not perfectly smooth; it has ripples over all the coins. I think it feels kinda cool, though.)

But wait, we're not done yet!

Next, get out your BLOW TORCH:

And you thought I was kidding.

The torch is to get rid of bubbles in your epoxy. And believe me, there are going to be lots and lots of bubbles. Keeping the flame about 6 inches away from the surface, pass it over the surface and watch those bubbles magically lift up and away, leaving behind a nice, glass-smooth skin.

And NOW...we wait. For about two days. (I think it's dry to the touch after one, though.)

And then...

Voila! An über cool penny desk!

Here's a close-up:

It looks amaaazing, if I do say so myself. I'm letting it cure an extra few days before putting anything heavy on it, though - like a vintage typewriter, perhaps? We'll see.

Also, once the desk was installed I realized I need something equally amazing to go on the wall *over* it. (Currently that's the only blank wall left in my entire office.) Which means: yup, another project! John and I are already eight hours into it, and I'm typing this completely covered in sawdust. So. Fun. But, that's for another day.

In the meantime, I hope to pick up more with posts; I know they've been a bit sparse lately. John helped me catch up on e-mail, so now I have tons of goodies to share. You guys send in the best stuff - keep it up! In fact, I think I'll feature some of your crafty triumphs next, so stay tuned for that!

*****

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