This past Saturday, K and I started looking for computer desks. We had been working off our dinning room table, but our bodies started to complain. K’s shoulder has been hurting at the end of the day for a while now, and my mouse-arm started to ache like crazy. It was time to get proper seats and desks set up.
We had looked at your typical places, Staples and Office Max, but we failed to find anything that would work in our space. We did find one that we thought would work until we realized that the pull out computer tray didn’t have enough room for a mouse. Is it really that hard for these companies to design something that actually works?
Then I had an idea. What if I could build one, something decent out of real wood that we could actually stain or paint to match our office.
For approximately 65 dollars, I built a spruce top desk with ash legs. It took 10 minutes to put together. If you’ve ever had to put together a piece of store-bought furniture, you know how much of a pain in the butt it is. So maybe this could be an alternative for you.
It requires 3 main parts.
#1) AllWood Factory Sanded Spruce board. 1 inch thick X 24 inches wide X 49 inches long. Costs $29.00. Buy at Lowe’s. It comes wrapped in plastic too. Home Depot doesn’t carry this.
#2) 4 28-inch Parsons Table Legs. Cost $8 each. Found at Lowe’s and Home Depot…look in the mill work section of the store. Each leg has a bolt sticking out of it used to screw the leg into your table. See next step.
#3) 4 Heavy Duty Top Plates. Cost $2. These plates allow for the leg bolts to be screwed on.
Steps:
#1) Pick a bottom for your Spruce top and simply lay it down on the floor with the bottom facing you.
#2) Take one corner top plate and position it at one of the four corners of your table. It works best if you offset the corner plate about 1/2″ to 1 inch from the edges of the spruce top. This way you will never see the metal hardware. Once you position it, screw it on. Spruce is a relatively soft wood, so it goes in easy. Repeat this step for the remaining 3 top plates. This takes about 8-10 minutes.
#3) Simply screw the legs in by hand into the top plates until hand tight.
#4) Turn your table around and it’s now ready to attach a computer tray and/or a stain.
Here’s a pic of how the leg fits in the top plate:
There are two options when attaching a computer tray. You can buy a complete slide-out tray with hardware included at Staples that attaches to the bottom of your desk, or you can build your own. To build your own, you have to order a keyboard slide. Unfortunately, Lowe’s and Home Depot only carry these online. They work almost like a drawer slide except they attach to the bottom of your desk. Then you attach a long piece of wood to the slide and viola, you’ve got a nice a nice slide-out keyboard and mouse tray.
I opted to buy a prebuilt keyboard tray because I didn’t want to wait for one to come in the mail.
I recognize that this is a very minimalistic computer table, but it does have some advantages over factory-made tables.
#1) You can paint or stain it. Factory made tables are composites. You can’t stain these.
#2) A factory desk would take hours to put together. This table takes about 10 minutes.
#3) An all-wood table is cheaper, but not cheap. A factory-made table is not cheaper, but it is indeed cheap.
#4) An all-wood spruce table is extremely light. You’d be surprise how easy it is to move it around. The factory tables are pretty heavy and require more than one person to move them.
K and I built two of these tables and set them up side by side in our family room/office/book-reading room. Guess which monitor is mine?
That big monitor is actually a TV we bought before we moved up here full-time. I didn’t know what else to do with it, so I decided to make it my giganto-monitor. The plus is that it could be used to get streaming Netflix movies from my computer, so K and I could chill out on the futon and watch a movie. And, of course, these tables don’t have a stain on them yet.
Very nicely done. I see that you have paid attention to the most important part; the chairs into which your butt and back must rest comfortably.
Indeed. The chairs were the not-so-cheap part of this project
these are great! if only i weren’t so lazy. i actually need a desk, but the space it needs to go in is < 44", which is kind of a weird size. i type this from the "kitchen" table which isn't really ever used for eating food. at least i don't work from home anymore!
the chairs look great, yes. and is that a glass of wine in the foreground? sold.
Yes, that is wine! Nothing like a good glass of wine after building a computer desk.
FYI, I believe home depot and lowes will cut pieces down to size for you! So if your space is less than 44″, then just have them cut it down to size. Probably should verify that, but I have read in forums that they will do that sorta thing. So all you really need is a power screw driver to drill in the screws for the top plates and the screws for the keyboard tray. Lazy is building your own computer desk. Hard work is trying to assemble a factory made computer desk that will keep you up ’till 3 in the morning.