Last Sunday, Drew, Matthew and I submitted a proposal to our investors (their mom and dad ;-), and thankfully it was accepted.  So I went to the house of the guy on Craigslist (Chris) who was selling the used computer we evaluated, and bought it - a Dell desktop and a 15" LCD monitor. 

When I brought it home, I realized it was going to be harder than I expected to put the components into the desk.  It's a "clamshell" type tower, which means that when you open it, the components are stored in both halves of the case, meaning that twice the effort would be needed to take the guts out and jam them in the desk.  However, I recalled seeing a large stack of very thin computers (HP Slimlines) at Chris's house, so I called him back up and asked about their cost and performance.  They were comparable, so I went back the next day to buy one.  I figured I'd keep the original for use around Milo (the woodshop needs a computer and internet connection - for quick "how-to" lessons, as well as for organizing our inventory - especially the thousands of fasteners we have in the shop - nuts, bolts, screws, etc.  A month or two ago I organized them all in the hundreds of plastic storage shelves we have, then took digital images of each shelf, organized the images into folders which indicate what category and subcategory they belong to, and stored it all on CD.  Elaborate, but fairly efficient for me to do).

When I got to Chris's and told him the original PC was too big for our use, he was kind and actually offered to buy it back.  I didn't take him up on that, but I appreciated the offer - this is one of the reasons I like to buy things off Craigslist - the few problems I've had with the gear I've bought, the people I purchased it from were ready to take it back and reimburse me.  :-)

Anyway - the HP slimline may fit in the desk without even having to take the components out.  As it is, we may just need to cut slots in the metal desk for the CD drive, the on/off switches, and the USB ports, but otherwise they can remain assembled together.

Over the next few days, I finished staining and varnishing the wooden panels to the desk, brushed, primed, and painted the metal frame, and mounted the LCD to the underside of the flip-top.  Painting the metal frame involved:

1. brushing the whole surface with a steel brush, to get the flecks of paint and rust off.  (Note: if the paint won't come off from brushing, leave it on - as my friend Josh said, if it has been there for 70 years, may as well leave it).
2. coat with Penetrol (a priming substance for oil-based paints) - using a "throw-away" brush
   
3. clean with mineral spirits and paper towels
   
4. lightly sand
   
5. clean again (Josh said vacuum, but I just washed it with mineral spirits and paper towels again)
6. paint with satin black oil-based paint using a regular paintbrush

That worked very well - I'll post pix later.

Mounting the LCD monitor to the underside of the desk, however, was trickier.  Fortunately the monitor had 4 mounting holes already installed in the back for installation with a wall-mount bracket, but I didn't have the screws to fit it.  Had to go to Lowes twice to get the right size (6x32, 3/8"), and even still, I think I need to return for longer ones.  Also bought a sheet of 6"x12" welding steel (16 gauge), some brass wood screws (8x32 1/2"), and a set of titanium nitride drill bits.  (I remember from one of my mat sci classes that TiN has a very low coefficient of friction and a high hardness, which means they do well during machining into metal).  TiN looks gold-colored, and in fact many gold-looking watches, jewelry, etc., are actually just steel coated with TiN. 

I drilled 4 holes in the back of the steel plate, and mounted the LCD to it to make sure they fit.  (Sort of).  Then I removed it, drilled 6 more holes for the wood screws, to afix the steel plate to the wooden desk.  (This all could have been avoided if I simply drilled through the wooden desktop, and fixed the monitor to it directly; however, after the staining job came out so nicely, I didn't want to mar the surface with four screw holes).  I then put the plate back on the monitor, then screwed the plate to the wooden desktop (a little awkward, since the screw holes are beneath the monitor edges, but there was enough space to reach them with a long screwdriver - I checked first). 

The result is pictured below.  I intend to remove the steel plate again, possibly contour it with the scroll saw I bought last week (make it a bit more ornamental), and then paint it brass, to match the rest of the fixtures we'll be putting on the desk.  I'll probably take the plastic case off the monitor and spraypaint that brass as well, as Jake von Slatt did on his SteampunkWorkshop.com site.  Pretty fun!