When I finished my basement a few years ago, I only had one computer so I only bought one computer desk. A few years later, I added another computer so I bought a similar style desk and butted them together.
See that big gap between them with the guitar sticking out of it? Yeah, me too. It was a dead space, completely wasted. I also added another monitor at one point and just laid a board across the gap and put the monitor on that. Anyway, I was tired of the wasted space, so this weekend I decided to build a computer desk from scratch.
With drawing in hand…it was off to Home Depot!
Side note: my dad always had a couple of old cinder blocks around the garage which were shockingly useful for all kinds of things. I never managed to find any out and about, so I finally bit the bullet and paid the $1 a piece for two of my very own!
I got this pocket jig about a year ago and I’m always looking for an excuse to use it. It basically allows you to join two boards together by creating a slanting “pocket” on the bottom of the board so you can run a screw in at an extreme angle and join the two boards together. I used this technique to build my daughter a simple desk so I did it again for this project.
Here’s the basic shape. The desktop is three 1×6 boards joined with my jig. They were 8 foot boards, so I cut them to make a 5 foot desk and a 3 foot desk. Conservation!
I sanded the heck out of it too.
I decided to make a little shelf that a two of my computer monitors can sit on. I also always wanted some easily accessible storage. I decided not to fasten this to the desk – it actually just sits on top.
I made a pull-out drawer for the bottom section on the right half of the desk and the top section is a cabinet.
Now, time to stain!
Don’t you hate it when your glove rips while you’re staining and you don’t notice?
So that’s about it! My wife helped me get the new desk downstairs. I got everything assembled (and took the opportunity to throw away two garbage baskets worth of random computer crap I no longer needed. Here’s the result!
So ultimately it’s much cleaner and more spacious while taking up basically the same amount of space. I couldn’t be happier! I also turned parts of the old desk into a new storage piece for our garage. So all in all, a fun weekend project!