How to Build an Epic Work Desk for Under $75 | Custom All Wood Desktop

welcome to the dojo, that's right Chad, here with the green light, today we are

build

ing a

custom

all

wood

computer

desk

, now we will try to keep it built for under 75 dollars, just use the basics and hopefully we will have What is a beautiful, very functional, very durable and robust

desk

for our invaluable computers and

work

space? So today you're going to need a couple of tools first, you're going to need a saw of some kind. I have a circular saw here, a miter saw. saw a table saw will be great, you can even use a hand saw if you want, you will need a drill for sure.

I also have an orbital sander here, you don't need it, you can roll with just some sandpaper and then you'll also want a pocket hole jig. I now have links to these things in the video description below. Oh, don't forget your eye protection and your fedora. Let's do this step. You have to go buy your

wood

now. I just went to Home Depot, grab three two-by-ten boards, so two is the thickness here, ten is the width here, which is ten inches. When you're at the lumber store, be sure to grab the flattest, straightest boards you can.

This will be a big help, so grab them, hold them this way, make sure you have a fairly straight surface to

work

on, hold them this way, make sure they don't stray too much to one side or the other, like I said. I'll save you a lot of time in the future. Step two. Cut these things lengthwise, so cut one end of your board so you have a good ruler to work with. Take your tape measure. I didn't mention the tape measure in the tool list to let you know now that you need a tape measure up to 60 inches, cut it with your saw step three and this is optional, if you have access to larger tools like a table saw you can run these edges along your table saw to get a nice straight, flat edge so that when the boards come together, they come together very evenly and smoothly and then you can also run them on a planer to essentially flatten and smooth them the top of the table now if you don't. have access to those tools, don't worry, it's no big deal, essentially the difference will be that you will have that kind of factory rounded edge on the edges, so they may not fit perfectly flush, there may be a little bit of unevenness, there may be a little space, but you know it's really not a big deal, especially if you're going for that farmhouse look, sometimes it's even a nice look, so keep that in mind if you have the tools. take that extra step if you don't, no big deal, what are we on step four?

Step four is simply lining up your boards side by side, how you want them placed. One thing to keep in mind here is to look at the end grain and see how it goes like this and then this one goes like a u and then this one goes like an n so alternate these because it will help keep the boards flat which tend to want to work in the direction which the end grain goes in, so when you alternate it cancels out some of that work, so step five is we're going to mark our pocket hole, so I have this table flipped over making sure to keep the boards in the same orientation as they had before and then we'll mark where we want our pocket holes so I have one to two inches from the edges of each of these boards and then I'm just evenly spacing the other pocket holes and I'm alternating so one on this board, one on this board, one on this board, one on this board, it will join these boards together evenly once we put those screws in, put these in.

Things are drilled now, okay, so our next step is to put some glue on it. I ran it through a table saw on the edges so they have flat edges that will stick together, so I'm going to use this glue. If you didn't do that, I would probably still add glue, but our pocket holes are going to be very important for them. If it's not super flat edges, I'm using titebond 3. This is probably overkill for something like this, but you know, any of the tight bond wood glues are a good way to go. One thing you do want to do is make sure you have enough glue in there, so once you squeeze it out, grab something like a credit card or a paint scraper. or something like that and just go through and really spread this out like you want more than that, like you almost want the consistency of this to look like you painted it on, like maybe it's not completely opaque, but you know it pretty much covers the entirety of these. edges here and then do your best to catch the spill as it goes over the sides and you don't have to do this on both sides, like you know two edges touch, you just have to do it on one of the edges that are touching. they're going to touch each other, so I'm just going to do it on this edge and then on this edge of the center board.

Another thing I should mention is that I have these placed here on pipe clamps which don't need to be made. which obviously we are only in my studio. I had these nearby so I'm going to use them, but the only thing they're really doing for me is making sure you know they keep the glue off the table and things like that just be careful not to leave too much glue on the bottom here , where you'll end up sticking yourself to the table because that's never fun. Well, this is the bottom of the table and it is currently being glued while the glue dries. since it's all attached, I'm just going to put these pocket hole screws in, especially if you want, I said don't rip the edges and flatten them once you've sewn the glue in, put them in there and then just take them.

Have someone hold them if you have clamps and then put them in there to really solidify the bond between the glue. If you ripped the edges, you know you can wait for it to dry and then do this later. I need to do it right now. I'm doing it right now for the sake of this video to show you another optional step. If you have a router, I just cast a little round. I'm going to go all the way around the edge just to give you a nice smooth edge along the entire corner, if you don't have one it's really no big deal especially if you're using factory wood and you didn't cut these edges because you'll already have one. kind of that factory rounded edge, so it's not a big deal by any means, but I'm going to do it here, okay, so once this is all glued and solid with the pocket holes and everything, um, yeah You didn't do it, if you don't do it.

By the way, you have a router and you didn't round the edges with it, you can do it with a center piece of sandpaper and at least take that sharp edge off to give you a little more comfort, but in any case. We have these edges completely rounded. Now I'm going to run a sander over all of this, so I have 80 grit sandpaper, 120 grit, and then 220 grit, so you probably want to get to that 220 grit to get it nice. and smooth, pay special attention to where the joints are between the two boards, that's where there may be a little unevenness and the sander helps a lot there, well, we have a very nice table back. let's go ahead and dye it.

I'm going to use this pre-dye first, so this is from minwax. Make sure you use a pre-stain if you are using this type of wood, so this again is just the dulling. The lumber from Home Depot is pine and it's a very soft porous wood, which means if you just put dye on it it will absorb, oh boy, it will absorb a lot in some places and not as much in others. It looks very, very stained, so make sure you put on a pre-dye before you dye this thing, so let's go ahead and dye everything well so that the pre-dye is there for about 15 minutes.

I wiped off the excess with a rag now I'm going to use a little bit of espresso stain here and I'm probably going to do at least two or even three coats because once you put this pre-stain on top of the stain, the first coat especially doesn't really get dark so I'm going to put on this first coat here and then we're going to, oh gosh, that looks really dark after I said it doesn't look dark, but we're going to put on this first coat and then we're going to wipe it off again after about 15 minutes and then we're going to wipe it off.

We will leave it all night. Come back, put on another layer and here's the completed desk. Honestly, I'm very happy with it. It cost me about 70 dollars. to

build

35 dollars for the table and 35 dollars for these legs I found on homedepot.com add a few dollars for stain and screws and that's all you need so I hope this inspired you to go out and build your own own and that's just At first, you can add all sorts of cool stuff to this, like LED lighting for cable management, really anything you can think of, so thank you so much for watching, hit the like and subscribe buttons, yeah you liked it, if you have any questions, leave them in the comments.

I will then do my best to reach out to them and if you would like to commission a

custom

build please email me and I would love to work together. There is more information in the description. I'll see you next time.