Building CSS mobile-first is the way forward, because blah blah blah progressive enhancement blah. Problem is, Internet Explorer prior to 9 ignores anything within media query blocks, leaving those browsers with mobile styles.

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Not all of us can get away with that, but thankfully, as Chris Eppstein points out, Sass 3.2 (not yet released) can generate a separate stylesheet with everything it needs to create a "desktop" look.

This page was built mobile-first where smaller width devices get a single column layout, but IE8 and below still get a two column layout.