[Closed] DIY office desk

Is that treated timber?

If so you shouldn’t use indoors as it’s not safe.

Best option is a cheap piece of kitchen worktop.

Lots of videos online about joining boards with hand tools but it doesn't look quick and easy. Kitchen worktop or furniture boards will be far easier.

It's probably pressure treated if he's left it outside but thought I'd be alright if I varnished it

As someone with a pine dining table that in the right light I can read five years worth of homework on, I'd recommend a hardwood unless you're really going for the rustic look...

If so you shouldn’t use indoors as it’s not safe.

Can you elaborate as to why it's not safe?

Treated timber I believe contains lovely stuff like formaldihide

We’ve done this with old floorboards, used dowels and glue. Really great effect, lots of people use scaffold boards too

I used some cheap CLS 6*2 studwork/construction timber from b&q and stained it.

I joined it by creating a 75mm deep pocket with a 20mm drill and then using 100mm screws into the next board combined with wood glue between the boards. To get the ends straight I made it slightly oversized and then trimmed all the boards to square with a circular saw and guide.

It's not especially even (crap timber) but I needed to build something on a budget to save my back from the low, rickety and umcomfy desk I had. I actually don't notice the little twists because I barely use anything other than keyboard and mouse on it.

Mine is attached to the wall with the desktop in a batten sandwich on two sides which has removed the worst of the twist in the timber.

Following 😀

Can you elaborate as to why it’s not safe?

It’s something to do with the chemicals used to treat it. I’ve no personal experience, but have seen a lot of similar comments on a Facebook group regarding indoor use for furniture making.

Besides it’s crappy sawn softwood, by the time you’ve sanded and planed it all up, you may as well buy a piece of worktop, or slab of live edge oak.

It’s something to do with the chemicals used to treat it. I’ve no personal experience, but have seen a lot of similar comments on a Facebook group regarding indoor use for furniture making.

Happy to be corrected, but I believe the use of hazardous preservatives (arsenic and chromium containing) is no longer allowed, and hasn't been for 15 or so years in the UK. I think the formaldehyde's were part of that group. Creosotes are fairly restricted to application too, so unless it's old recycled treated wood, there shouldn't be any risk in terms of giving off any chemicals.

wouldn't want to lick it though. 😉

I used a lump of worktop when I did mine and found a company that made me a couple of legs. One cantilever in the middle and one upright on the left corner.

It was quick and easy, just needed slightly scribing to the wall on the right.

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As I said I’ve no personal experience, but I’ve read that it is to be avoided.

Don’t forget that treated timber is often crappy sawn heart wood, which is never fully dried due to being store outside and still wet with preservative.

Also interested in this. Just moved and my old desk is far too big for the room now being used as an office so want to make/get a desktop. Ikea used to do really good lengths of desktop - just checked and they still do for relatively little:

https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/cat/table-tops-11844/

I've no creativity but I can follow instructions so I'm doing this plan:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.instructables.com/Simple-Low-Cost-DeskTable/%3famp_page=true

Just made the table legs so far out of 2x4 and 1x4. Cost £37. Once sorted top it's just a case of sticking it on. The desk can be as long as I like

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It might not help but I saw someone on the Yorkshire Cycling Sales Facebook group selling a lovely piece of solid oak kitchen worktop for peanuts last week. I had no use for it but still wanted to buy it 🙂

I have built loads of stuff out of wood and worktops/table tops are hard to get nice fixing bits of wood together in my opinion. Ikea do a nice solid wood desk top for £75 (beware the non solid ones) which I bought for my wife’s desk as nothing else came close to the value it represented.
If you are lucky you might find someone selling off some old solid wood worktop which is also very nice too but hard to obtain cheap.
In my own office I renovated an old 1950’s Abbess teachers desk, needed a bit of glue on the joints and a sand/protect but for £25 it’s amazing and looks fantastic.

This place is skacking, no one has come along and suggested spending £££ on a domino

B&Q do a 28mm 2.44m worktop for 38 quid, they've got stock and you can collect.
https://www.diy.com/departments/28mm-matt-brown-oak-effect-laminate-particle-board-post-formed-kitchen-worktop-l-2400mm/3663602636168_BQ.prd

It's a lot more solid than the "LINNMON" table tops.

I've supported mine off the wall with some brackets and hidden the cables on a shelf at the back as I wanted a clear floor, but you could just stick some legs on it and use it as a desk.

If you fancy a sit stand desk you can buy motorised legs for not much (way less than IKEA prices) and then add a worktop of you choice.

You want a nice smooth seamless top for a desk.

I bought the cheapest flush door from B&Q, 2 brackets and 2 legs. Cost about £40. Lovely big desk. Took about 15 mins to construct.

I've since bought an electric up down base from amazon for £200 and fixed the door on that for my dodgy back.

I've gone for it! 3 lengths of 1.6m cost £20. I'll just dry out for a couple of weeks then sand then possibly tung oil, varnish or paint

I'm not going to be eating off it and the wood wil be sealed so I'm okay with any health risk. Plus I don't mind that its pine as I can live with a bit of patina. Rustic innit

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We just used some hardwood kitchen worktop from B&Q.

The office is only about 7ftx12ft so a batten on either wall and the worktop sits on them with a leg in the middle at the back as it was bendy enough to be springy in the middle, but not so much that it could twist forwards.

Wasn't cheap, about £80 I think, but near-zero skill/effort and looks really expensive.

When I get it set up I plan on doing a standing desk but on the end as there'll be enough room. Favouring the IKEA 'Lack' side table with a keyboard shelf on the legs .

WFHFTW

I made a standing desk (typing at it right now) out of three scaffold boards, that I jointed with a rail saw and then stuck together with dominos. After a lot of planeing, sanding, and staining, it's turned out really rather great.

Wasn't totally convinced about the standing desk idea, but figured i'd give it a go (got some flexispot legs off amazon which have memory settings (very handy)) if for no other reason then it stopped me having to work out what height I needed to make it! Turns out they're great - going onto a dull call but need to pay attention? Change to standing mode and boom!

I wouldn’t have recommended your timber choice but fair play for giving it a go. So first thing that comes to mind -
That wood is really gonna wanna twist and warp as it dries. So get it on a flat surface, stack it using some kind of spacer for airflow (known as stickers if you’re a wood person) and keep some weights on top.
It’s gonna be soaking wet... I dunno what to recommend other than best practice would be to leave it for months, but I doubt your gonna do that. Also it’s treated... ah well fill your boots. Hopefully it’ll go well, if it doesn’t you’ll learn a bit about wood and that’s all good.

You'll be absolutely fine using that indoors (I'm not a chemist but more of a 'sheesh, just get on with it' woodworker). As for joining, I'd normally use pocket hole screws or biscuits, glue and clamps. With that wood though, whatever joining method you use, it is going to dry out and create gaps. If it was me, I'd wait until it happened then fill the gaps and sand back. Have fun.

I spent ages hunting for a desk that fitted my needs but eventually decided to build/assemble my own using a walnut worktop from worktop express using their option to cut/profile to size along with legs from amazon, very chuffed with how it turned out and I used a walnut chopping block from worktop express to make a wee side table.

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Not really a cheap option (£500ish) but I had details like desk height/speaker tweeter height, seating position, top shelf height/depth etc that I wanted for exact speaker placement and in the end it worked out that was able to build it exactly to my needs.

@somafunk, that's pretty much exactly what I was planning on building at some point. Nice to see a good review of their workstops as desks. Where did you get that drawer pedestal from? It's lovely.

(can't believe I just asked where to get a drawer unit from)

choice but fair play for giving it a go. So first thing that comes to mind –
That wood is really gonna wanna twist and warp as it dries. So get it on a flat surface, stack it using some kind of spacer for airflow (known as stickers if you’re a wood person) and keep some weights on top.
It’s gonna be soaking wet… I dunno what to recommend other than best practice would be to leave it for months, but I doubt your gonna do that. Also it’s treated… ah well fill your boots. Hopefully it’ll go well, if it doesn’t you’ll learn a bit about wood and that’s all good.

Hmmmm,thanks for the guidance. I was told it was kiln dried so I thought a few weeks of indoor/greenhouse storage would be enough. I've stored them and spaced them out and just put some weights on. We ll have to see. I'm putting it in my new house before Xmas, that's the idea

Cheers Ross, yeah the worktop was finished to a very high standard and all cut with their cnc machine so it turned out perfect, the small 3 drawer file cabinet was bought from Amazon,, quite pricey but very thick steel construction and well worth it compared to the usual cheaply made flimsy cabinets

Hmmmm,thanks for the guidance. I was told it was kiln dried so I thought a few weeks of indoor/greenhouse storage would be enough.

oh, I just assumed this was sawn treated timber stored outside which usually means it’s soaking wet, if it’s kiln dried it’s far more suitable (and ready) for building into indoor furniture. Either way store it flat.

@somafunk that's a lovely desk but it looks like when you're clocking on youre sat in front of Lemmy's Marshall stacks at a motorhead gig

, I just assumed this was sawn treated timber stored outside which usually means it’s soaking wet, if it’s kiln dried it’s far more suitable (and ready) for building into indoor furniture. Either way store it flat.

Posted 1 hour ago

The guy at the timber yard said it was kiln dried but he might not have had a clue. It was stored outside and is probably just constructional timber but whatevs I'll see how it goes. Thanks for your tips. I've stored it flat with one inch spacers. Fingers crossed

fingerbang : That's the GIK Acoustics treatment panels, got 21 of them in my 3x4m room to improve/treat the living room as I like music to sound good. These days due to MS I spend most of my life sat on my arse so thought "why not?"

Very nice, mate I've got serious office envy. Here I am bragging about my £20 wet timber. I hope you're secretly running Google from that pimp ass set up. It looks like rockfield studios in there!

Don’t undersell the use of pine for your desk, done right and finished well it’ll make you smile every time you sit at it, I’ve used osmo polyx oil on a friends old floorboards after removing the horrible yellowing varnish (that took 4 days of sanding to prepare) and the finished result was stunning, take your time and it’ll be worth it

Bit late to this, but to me it looks like rough sawn, treated timber for outdoor use. I'll guess it probably hasn't seen a kiln and if it had the benefit is lost from sitting outside in the wet. Dry slowly as Goldfish suggests, hopefully the knots won't pop.
The treatment rarely goes in far (little drying time, less chemical, they don't want it to last you too long) so planing a few mm may get you back to clean timber.

At the very least will be a good base for a thin top finish of nice ply, metal sheet, melamine, whatever does it for you.

Why are all these desks rectangular? Anyone made anything more ergonomic? Small rooms, utilising corners?

Spent all my working life using desks provided by someone else and getting worse over the years - hot-desking anyone? - so the last thing I want is to reproduce the old office style environment.

Somafunk: room looks great - apart from the worktop, a piece of real wood would have been better - but why are your speakers so close together, not even on the ends of the shelf?

Fingerbang: reckon that'll look good.

Speakers are set where they are to be equidistant from left/right walls (1100mm) to aid in lessening speaker boundary interference from the initial primary reflection points and distance between speakers is also 1100mm, both angled in to my seated listening position so I always sit in the sweet spot of the room, symmetry is your friend when setting up speakers/listening position.

The worktop is real walnut, or did you mean an actual one piece slab of walnut? - I think that would have prohibitively expensive.

Thread resurrecta!

It'll come as no surprise but the nay sayers were right. The treated wood was a nightmare to deal with. I let it dry out for 2 weeks and then tried to plane it but the surface justbroke away in strings, so sacked it off

However, managed to get a Howdens laminate kitchen top off gumtree for £30. 1420 x 60

So just put a trim around it, 2x1 and just finished sanding. Just need to paint the legs, oil the trim and then attach some supports and put it together. Not sure what colour to do the legs?

Dunno what to do with that treated wood now

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We both use old dining tables.

The OH's is a simple rectangular one about 800mm*1200mm.

Mine was our old dining table which I couldn't face moving on when we got a bigger table.
It's a beautiful and delicate Edwardian extended oval my Grandma bought me and my ex +30 years ago.

Looks great that 👍😃

Looks good, and decently functional. I like the fabricated legs.

You could always use your 3 large spare pieces to make a triangular raised bed for the garden.

@somafunk that desk looks really good, love the walnut worktop and black legs combo. Will use that for some inspiration for my standing desk I plan on making.

@fingerbang looks good. Liking the work on the legs.

Anyone here able to recommend a standing desk frame ?