Build a Super CHEAP and EASY DIY Desk!

[Music] what's going on everybody welcome to my channel I my rebuilder today we're going to build a cheap and quick and easy computer desk slash homework desk or whatever you want to use it for my intention is to make it as cheap as possible and as easy as possible for people who have never really done anything like this before so if you haven't hopefully we can make this pretty easy for you so if you have any questions leave comments below and with that let's get started we'll go over the tools and materials you're going to need okay so for materials we only need four pieces of wood it's pretty good right you got two two by six by eight and two two by four by eight we make we might need a third one a third two by four but hopefully we can get away with just two we'll find out in the middle of the video hopefully you're watching this whole all the way through before you go out buy our materials just in case also this isn't full bucks and would rhaegar so that's all it's going to cost you to make this table now I am assuming that you have screws and wood glue so I'm not factoring that into the price because most people who are interested in this type of thing do have that laying around already from previous projects if you don't you're gonna have to factor that in it's not a whole lot of money you know another five bucks or something like that actually throw a little more with screws but anyways it's not a whole lot more and it's going to be a lot cheaper than going Walmart and buying an eighty dollar piece of crap that's going to fall apart and it's made of fiber board this is going to last for a very long time even though this is cheap wood it's still very strong and it's not just going to fall apart on you so with that we'll get started okay so as far as tools go we've got some pretty basic stuff here you may not have some of this stuff around a house and you don't necessarily need all of this so we've got a clamp here and if I'm going to give you two ways that you can put the tabletop together one which is what I'll be doing is gluing it the other way is screwing it all together and if you don't intend on gluing it then you're not going to need this if you do you will need a clamp so hopefully you have that and then to go on that here's the wood glue you will need this no matter what these are screws I got a huge box here I always recommend getting a big box like this because I build stuff all the time and these boxes will last me a good six months easy so I recommend getting something like this this is the only project intent on doing that and you could probably get away with something smaller a level there's another tool we're going to need these are really cheap but if you don't want to spend the money on one that's fine you it's not a necessity but it definitely helps you get your table top level you will need a pencil you could use a pen or a marker but I recommend a pencil you're going to need your measuring tape so that you can measure obviously and last but not least this is also another must you're going to need a drill or an impact driver now some of the bigger tools we're going to be using a table saw and a chop saw or miter saw now if you don't have either these you can get away with using this for the project alright so now that we have gone over all the materials and tools we're going to need let's go ahead and get this project started okay so for the very first step what we need to do is decide how wide do we want our table to be we're going to need our wood obviously we consider two by fours aside for now we're going to use the two by sixes and you're take measure so this board is 8 feet long which means we have about 4 feet to work with if you go over 4 feet then you're going to need another 2 by 6 so try to keep it under 4 feet and I'm just going to kind of wing it and I guess I should provide a disclaimer now I don't use plans typically when I build things I just kind of wing it I just go off of whatever I have in my head I kind of see an end result and then I just figure out how to get there um while I'm building so I don't have any plans to provide you just follow what I'm doing and I'll try to explain it as best as I can so for now I'm just going to kind of figure out how wide do I want this so I think 4 feet actually looks pretty good so I'm going to go with I'm going to go with an even four feet so here's 4 feet mark the other board as well all right and also you should mark from the other side as well because even though these boards say they're 8 feet long they're probably not they're probably a little over 8 feet yeah so we've actually got about an extra quarter of an inch here so mark it from that side hopefully you can see where I'm going here and now I've got a little gap here that's going to be removed I don't know if you can see out here now get the camera over here okay you can see my markings here this is going from this side down here this is four feet and coming from the other way this is four feet so you've got this gap here that you're actually going to be removing okay so what we're going to do now is we're going to cut this in half basically on the chop saw so if you don't have a chop saw this is we're going to use the circular saw you're just going to do the same thing this just goes a little quicker a little more convenient but open that it accomplishes the same goal so do what you got to do to get this thing cut now all right so that half is done and we'll take off that little piece that was left over [Music] all right that's what you have left move on to the next step which is cutting the other one there we go so now we're going to move on to cutting the tabletop this is we're going to need the table saw and what we're going to do here is we're just going to remove a little bit of this edge just enough to get it flush and I get it flattened out because if you look see if I can get it see how it's rounded there we're going to try to remove that we want it to be nice and square kind of like this edge right here and that way when we glue the four pieces together there won't be this little Ridge in it now if you don't have a table saw this is where it's going to cause you a little bit of trouble you're going to need to try to do the same thing with the circular saw and I'll be honest I've never done that so I'm sure it can be done and if I had to do it I would make it work but it's probably a little more difficult than using a table saw now if you do go to use a circular saw the biggest thing is going to be you're going to need to mark the line all along here and you can do that with your tape measure or if you've got a yardstick or something like that get a nice straight line showing where you want to cut and you'll just follow that with your circular saw if you don't have a line you might start getting a little wavy with your cut so if you do have a table saw it's good it's going to make life a little easier so all you're going to do is we're going to set this on here you bring it up to the blade I'll move your fence so that it's just hitting so you want to get it so it just takes off the edge there and that looks pretty good so we'll go ahead and run it through and see how it goes and I always recommend with a table saw using hearing protection because it gets a little loud [Music] pretty good to me so the next step is going to be to take a board flip it over the other way so now that the side we just cut is towards the fence and we're going to do the same thing where I have to bring the fence in a little bit we're going to line it up again bring the fence in just a little bit take off the outer side loosen the fence that looks pretty good right there alright let's give it a go put on your ears okay so at this point these two boards are complete these two boards have one side sawed on the other side is still of the rotted edge there so what we're going to do is we're going to leave these two like that because if we were to cut them often basically make a sharp edge on it and we're going to want to route it when we're done anyways or sand it to get it rid of that sharp edge because that's the edge that's going to be you're going to be up against so we're just going to leave that and then we don't have to worry about routing it so remember the goal of this is to make it quick so we'll go on to the next step we've got our tabletop pretty much done as far as the cutting goes what I've done here is I just fit them all together and you're going to want to make sure the rounded edges on the outside and then the flat edges are all flushed together and that's as you can see is going to make your tabletop now at this point what we're going to do is we're going to glue it all together if you're not gluing then you're going to need one of your two by fours and you're probably going to have to have that third 2x4 that I mentioned in the beginning so what you're going to do is you could do it one of any number of ways what I probably would do is measure it out so that it's the same way what your top is going to be cut it and then you're going to screw in from the bottom into each board you're going to do one right here you're going to do one on this side as well I'm not going to do that myself so you're just gonna have to kind of figure that bit out shouldn't be too complicated like I said just measure cut screw it in and then you'll be done with that portion for those of you that are going to be gluing it will go on from here so I'm going to put this aside for now and I'm going to get out the clamps probably going to want four of them at least ideally so you can do two on the top and two on the bottom and I will kind of give an even pressure and it won't do number two on the bottom you could kind of force it up to bow the opposite direction putting two on top to and bottom will keep it nice and flat so get these out of the way for a second so the best way to do this really is to get it underneath all of the boards or anyone together like that and stand it upright there we go just like that and then you're going to want to leave yourself enough room to separate the boards let me grab the wood one I don't know okay so you want to leave yourself a little bit of room to work you don't need to tighten it up yet so we'll just stand them up like this and glue so if you don't know what glue is very strong it'll it'll keep these pieces of wood together just fine when I first started woodworking I didn't really know how strong this stuff was it's always felt like I needed to put some screws in it just to help hold stuff together if I glued it that's not the case this stuff is very very strong so before we do that just kind of spread it around get nice and even some of the excess glue off here okay let's now hire to set your first one down get your second one set up make sure you're putting the glue side to the non glue side of your second one if you want to glue both sides that's fine I know some people prefer to do that I personally don't care to do that and I've never had an issue so the key is making sure that you get it clamped enough then on this one probably don't need to glue that side okay now squeeze it together so these are not flush the other thing you have to do is make sure you get this even these n bits if you have a little bit sticking out on one side or the other that's fine just make sure that one side is completely flush on the other side as the forks that might stick out a little more we can cut it off at the end so another thing you have to do see the feeling here I can feel this board kind of went down whereas this one's coming up I'm up you can see that on the camera so I'm going to loosen it up fix that [Music] just try to check to make sure everything is nice and even so one thing I should say too if you get a bunch of this excess wood blue coming out after you clamped it it's best to try to get it off right now while you can otherwise you're gonna have to sand it off you're probably meaning to send over this anyways but just makes it a little easier and it's a little less work for your sandpaper also snaking like I said earlier I just kind of wing it as I go along and I was thinking how am I going to attach the legs well I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to end out doing something like I said where if you weren't going to use wood glue to make that cross beam basically and I think that's what I'm going to do to attacks the legs so it doesn't hurt that we glue this but I would say it's not a hundred percent necessary step although even if I had thought of this ahead of time I probably still would have glued this just for extra support and keeping it seamless once we sand it so I'm going to grab the two by fours okay so we're going to take our two-by-four what we're going to do is we're going to line it up so that it's just over the edge we don't want it right to the edge just kind of eyeball it what you feel like doing I guess there's no right or wrong way for doing this then I'm going to come right here and I'm going to put a mark right where I have it on this side to be the equivalent on that side all right and then we're going to cut from there then we'll test fit it now it's good so I'm going to do a second one all right there we go so I'll cut four of these okay change of plans so we've got our pieces cut here alright have my pieces hopefully you're not cutting along with me I'm changing plans just a little bit I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually slide this up a bit okay I'll do it from this side so you can see a little better and I'm going to have it like that so what I need to do now is measure over here and cut somewhere around here so that this will fit and the quick and easy way of doing that let's just set your leg like this and marking it now if you want to get if you want to be more accurate and normally I am but this project I'm trying to keep it as simple as I can to measure in with a with your ruler or tape measure or whatever but this is a quick and easy way to do it and it'll be fairly accurate so now every cubbies I'm going to measure it say on IDs we're looking at seventeen and a half inches so if you cut to seventeen and a half inches and you line it up I'm just kind of estimating at this point so you can kind of see how it's going to look it'll look like this so I think that's how this portion you're going to need your drill and you're gonna need some screws and we'll get a little more accurate now with measuring so first eyeball it it's pretty close then I'm going to measure to see how they compare okay so one in three quarters from the edge should get you there so the next thing you have to decide is how far in do you want this to be I want it pretty far out just so I have more room under here for my legs to move around so currently I have it at three quarters of an inch and I think I'm going to keep it there so the next step is to screw it in now if you if you didn't glue your wood together at this point you're going to want to put one in at every board and we're going to do the same thing for measurements so we'll eyeball it first using these put your mock-up legs looks pretty good and then we'll actually see where we're at so if you get one side on one in 3/4 the other side should be at 1/2 3/4 yep and then make sure we're 3/4 pin and we are and we are it's good to measure on both ends of the wood so you're not slanted there we go so that bit is done we know at least you should know that this piece of wood is it's a 2 by 6 right so you think oh it's 2 inches well that's not correct it's actually 1 and 1/2 if you don't believe me measure and this is 2 by 4 is not actually 2x4 it's one and a half by three and a half I don't know why they call it a two by four and then they cut it to one and a half by three and a foot that's what they do so what we're going to do is we're going to measure this leg here accounting for the thickness of the tabletop which is one and a half inches and if we want it at what did I say 30 inches 30 29 I think I said 30 so we'll cut this to what 28 and 1/2 plus 1 and 1/2 here will put us at 30 so get the tape measure and this will also determine whether or not we're going to need that third 2x4 so 28 and a half there we go we will cut and then we will cut cut a little cut and I think we might actually have enough for the four legs which means we won't need a third 2x4 so you just save two dollars and sixty eight cents congratulations and I realize I'm not wearing my safety glasses but I left them in the house I'm trying to hurry up and get this done so I have to get to bed as I work very early in the morning which is not really an excuse but that's what I'm doing oh you know what we are going to need another 2x4 all right well luckily I do have a third one so here we go that's unfortunate still under 20 bucks hard to beat all right there we go got our four legs okay so we're at the point where we can put our legs on now if you glued your tabletop together we can go ahead and remove the clamps also for the record I ended out putting two more screws in because I knew that I was going to know getting lazy and not waiting for this thing to dry so that'll help hold it all together like I said I like to do this stuff on the fly sometimes it means having to redo things but just how I roll I don't like having plans all the time sometimes I do but if I get new ideas I can change I don't have to worry about the plants and sticking with the plans what we're going to do is wind it up and put a screw in through here into there we're going to do that kind of on both sides so I'll do one a little closer to this side you guys have suggestions for anything you'd like to see me build please comment and let me know and I will try my best and I do the majority of my building my favorite stuff to work with is two by fours and two by sixes because it's cheap and everybody has an access to it it's cheap it's easy to work with you get great results this is a not the best example of the great results of candy but I've got a lot of other stuff I've built that I'm told I've showed people and told them I made it from two by fours and they didn't believe me because it came out so well once he stained it and you know you get it cut down and stuff it really looks good so if you have anything you want to see be built out of two by fours let me know and I'll get it done alright so we are really close to be done here as you can see these are a little wobbly so we're going to add some supports and I'm thinking about right there something like that so here's a little trick if you need a partner to help you fold something just put a clamp there on one side so I'm not going to measure the first first time but we'll measure it after to make sure it's flush I'm just going to put in a screw right here looks pretty good and a second one there we go and now what we'll do is we measure from what's currently the top so it's right at nine inches so we'll put this one there we go so let's store these it up a little bit but you can see still wiggling but we are going to fix that don't worry let's do this side so now on this one we will have to measure on both sides because we want it to be even with this so I'm just going to come down nine inches and Mark it right there so now we know that that's where we want the top or the bottom or whatever this thing's upside down so it's confusing we want the top of this to be flush with air there all right now we'll do the same thing for the other side all right so stir it up a little bit it's not great but again we're going to fix that so I think at this point actually there is one more thing that we need to do this is going to help stir it up as well and this is also reassuring why we need the third 2x4 you can see me okay well unfortunately my camera actually died on me while I was in the middle of putting this cross beam on so I didn't realize it and I did it without telling you what I did so I'll go over that now basically you're just going to need your tape measure you're going to measure from one side of the cross beam go this way to the other one and what you should get should be somewhere around forty six and a half inches you're going to take what's left of your third 2x4 and you're going to cut that to forty six and a half inches and then just lay it across the top or what will be the bottom and screw it in and now it's much sturdier it's still jiggling a little bit but again we're about to fix that right now okay we are almost done so now get anything left to do is to put a couple screws in in the corners all right and that's it as far as building goes we're done the only thing left to do is to sand it all out smooth and if you want to you can standing at this point well at this point after you sander it you can stain it that's it from here you can add other accessories you can add you know something to put if you've got a computer tower you want to put on here or something you can get a get a couple over two by fours and start accessorizing this thing but as far as a basic table this is it what did we say was 14 15 bucks so hard to beat hope you enjoy this video and if you did subscribe and come back and check out some other ones I'm going to be making soon again if you have anything you want me to make with two-by-fours feel free to leave posts in the comment section below and the only thing left is sanding and that's boring so I'm not going to make you watch me do that alright guys have a good one [Music]

Channel: Irie Builder

Views: 1,129,430

Rating: 4.7247696 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, build, desk, computer desk, homework desk, cheap, easy, affordable, plans, beginner, irie builder, Cheap desk, how to, how to build a desk, how to build a cheap desk, woodworking projects, woodworking tools, woodworking tips, DIY, Easy desk building, how to make a desk, wood working, Irie Builder, make, make a desk, making a desk, small table, Work from home, simple desk, diy desk, diy computer desk, diy table, how to make a table, how to build a table, diy workbench

Id: qqC-w73zpXU

Length: 36min 39sec (2199 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 16 2016