How To Build Your Own Desk - Part 2

Written on July 9, 2007 – 3:53 am | by PT | |

I’ve been building a desk for our home office. I thought it might be more economical to make one instead of buying. Plus, it would serve as a nice night and weekend project for me. Here are the plans I’m using. It’s been a while since I’ve made enough progress to post again about this project. The delay was due to two things: us being out of town for three weeks, and me needing a “biscuit joiner” to make the cabinets. Yes, I said biscuit joiner. I didn’t know what one was either at first.Well, the plans called for biscuit joints to be used on the cabinets, so, I needed the joiner. These “biscuits” basically act like dowels between the pieces of plywood, no screws needed. I guess this is true woodworking. The joiner was hard to find for a decent price. I went to pawn shops, looked online, looked on sales racks. I ended up getting one (Craftsman) at Sears for around $89. I know you can get a less expensive version on Amazon. Besides the wood (all birch plywood), the joiner has been the biggest investment I’ve had to make in this project.

On to the pics. I’ve finished the top of the desk and the cabinets. Here’s the desk top:

I thought it turned out nice. I’ve got it on top of my folding table until I finish the rest of the desk and can stain (or paint) all at once. You can see the big sheet of birch on top, and support pieces underneath. Also, both the top and supports are surrounded by moulding. I’ve had to get very familiar with my miter box.

Here are the completed cabinets. These will support the desk and house the file drawers:

These two cabinets are joined together with nothing but wood glue and wooden #20 biscuits. It feels really good to have made these.

So far I’ve spent around $350 and 25-30 hours on this project. Some of the things I’ve done that have kept me from spending too much:

• Asked Lowe’s to make my rough cuts. The will do this for free with the purchase of wood.
• Borrowed a friends table saw for the fine cuts. My friends have all kinds of tools…just not biscuit joiners!
• Purchased a manual miter box kit instead of power saw. This thing is a beast to use though, especially on hardwood moulding.
• Doing my own sanding with regular sand paper, instead of buying a sander.

Now that I have the right tools, I suspect I will be ready for stain in two to three more weeks.

Build Your Own Desk - Part 1.

Build Your Own Desk - Part 3.