DIY Desk under $50 | DIY Creators

is it even possible to build a desk with a little bit of cool factor to it for under fifty dollars the answer to that is yes this is going to be possible because we're gonna find the cheapest materials that we can work with and give us this unique look let's take a look at what you'll need for this project you're gonna need two of these the two by twelve by eight foot lumber you're also going to need two of these two by six by eight lumber and you're gonna need one two by four you're gonna also need some half inch dials and pocket hole screws and yes together all of those are still gonna come in under fifth it up now of course this price doesn't include tools and you won't need to spend a ton of money on that either you'll be able to get by with a few tools like a circular saw a drill and also a sander so before we dive into the video i'm going to tell you a little bit about today's sponsor and that's topcashback.com it's a cashback app that gives 100 of the commission back to members this means you can collect a small percentage of your purchase in the form of a rebate when shopping online over time that can add up and there's no minimum payout to some extent we're all shoppers so if you're going to shop online why not take advantage of the available cashbacks it's free to join just click on the link down in the video description enter your email password and after that you get access to over 4 000 retailers you can do this from a mobile device the website or even their browser extension no perks here you can shop as you normally do when you're on your favorite retailer click on the extension and see if there's an offer and if you want you can see deals before you shop by just heading over to the website browsing the menus selecting the category for example home and garden then scroll down and go to home improvement and tools you can see all the related retailers like lowe's home depot true value ace hardware michael's dollar tree how many people have eight percent cash back so i'm gonna select that retailer as you can see there's a lot of option here so just take an action and that'll take you over to home depot website where you can then shop as usual click the link and sign up and you'll get a 10 top cashback sign up bonus plus cash back up on spending 25 dollars [Music] all right so you got to pay close attention here this is the plan right here i need a few pieces to fit inside the leg the waterfall part for the desk an apron and also a leg so now that i brought you up to speed let's build this thing i'm going to use a 2 by 12 by 8 foot solid yellow pine actually a couple of those i'm going to pull out the tape and make a mark at 29 inches do this on both parts now i'm going to use the speed square as a guide to go ahead and cut that board at the line you don't have to be too perfect here because we're going to trim this a little later now i'm going to lock a 2x4 to my table saw fence and use that as a guide while i rip down the side of these boards and try to create a straight edge now i actually have a jointer like right behind me which would make this a lot easier to create that straight edge but i want to show you that you can get close enough with a table saw you can also strap a straight edge to one of these pieces of boards and use a circular saw as well for this application this is going to work out just fine the joint is tight enough for me but if you run into issues where you don't have such luck you can always just cut it again and just trim off a small piece until you get there so now i'm going to mark off where i want the dowels to sit i'm going to mark in about two inches from each end and then also place those about 10 inches apart now i'm just going to carry that mark over to the next part whenever i'm joining inch and a half materials i like to use a half inch dial the jig i'm using is from rockler and i'll link that down in the video description the only drawback here is the dials are not going in the very center so i'm going to add a few additional lines so i can add a few more dials but put those on the opposite side using one rule is probably just fine but i'm pretty confident that adding a second row is just going to make this a lot better so if you apply a little patience it all can line up just fine so here's my little trick to keep me focused i like to mark the lines on both pieces then i'll make a little dot to let me know which side i need to drill on as long as i line up my dowel jig to the line my hole should be pretty accurate after drilling everything i did a dry fit to make sure everything lined up and it did now i'm going to apply wood glue to the entire surface and then fill the holes with wood glue and after going one direction i'm going to come back the other way installing the dials [Music] i'll also drop a little bit in the opposite end just so nothing gets scraped off and now it's time to put it together [Music] go ahead and put some clamps on and if you don't have clamps big enough to hold this together you can try doubling up the other option is you can use band clamps and if you don't have those either you can always use ratchet straps i set the top off to the side and then put my focus over on the leg it was the same process [Music] normally i let the clamp sit for about 24 hours when doing something like this but i only let a few hours go by which is good enough you just cannot disturb the joint too much i didn't need the top to be as long as it was so i trimmed off a part of it now to attach the leg to the top this is kind of tricky because there's no easy way to do this as shown i use the 2x4 to clamp the jig and drill the holes i drilled four on the outside and two holes on our inner side i'm going to use the dowel center to go ahead and mark the leg i drilled the two holes on the inside freehand so only one of them actually came out good so we'll just ride with that again not that different from what i did before seeing these things line up in strict satisfaction now before walking away you definitely want to go ahead and check to make sure that the leg is square to keep things as rigid as possible i'm going to add an apron between both legs i could have also installed this with dowels but i'm going to go ahead and install this with pocket hole screws and again everything i'm using in this video will be linked down in the video description and now it's a good time to go ahead and sand down the loose parts i use clamps to hold the frame together as i drive in pocket hole screws now i could have ran this through my planer and cleaned these boards up but i want to show you that i'll jump into trenches with you guys and do the hard work to clean these boards up i let the outer leg dictate where i put the apron that leg is centered with the top of the desk so to install the apron is as simple as driving in a few pocket hole screws right now the pocket holes are facing the outside of the desk but eventually i change this to face on the inside either way can work if you're gonna put the desk up against the wall let the pocket hole face out if you're going to put the desk out in the open face the pocket holes in in most cases i make this so that the leg is removable by using threaded inserts here but instead i want to keep the cost down to use the least amount of hardware i double checked to make sure that the leg was in center but also straight after that it's a matter of driving in the pocket hole screws from the back and driving in a few more pocket hole screws to secure the legs so take a look at the legs and you just see how simple that looks i mean it's kind of a modern look quite clean but if you want to step that up i'm going to show you a quick way what you can do to it and actually i'm just going to do it in this video since i normally make a lot of modern stuff let's just give it a little twist to this one first thing we need to do here is cut these at a 22 degree angle and you can do this with a miter saw but i'm going to do it with a circular saw all right overall i think this looks pretty good so i'm gonna just glue these in place and that's gonna be it these parts are only decorative so i'm only gonna use wood glue to secure these pieces in place this is some rough lumber so a lot of time was poured into sanding the top of this down travis was interested in this desk for his daughter so i let him get a piece of the action and do his first routing job the roundover looks pretty good but most importantly it's kid friendly i may have taken the clamps off a bit early because i don't recall seeing this gap in here but that's okay we're going to fix that with sawdust and some wood glue this worked but the sawdust was soaking up the wood glue making it hard to push either way it's a quick solution and i didn't have to go buy any wood filler so we'll let this set up and then we'll sand the top one more time before applying stain i'm a big gel stain fan i've been using it for years now and it's still one of my go-to based on my past experience i like to work on one surface at a time so i'm going to cover the entire top wipe that off and then move to the next section now you'll need a couple clean rags for this and as you wipe this off you can just see the reveal and everything starts to look good until i got about right here and i saw this big spot in the middle of the desk and i knew this was wood glue and it sucked because there's not an easy way to go around this i eventually had to send the entire top off i didn't panic it was annoying but i just resurfaced it and i did the same process again and by the time i got done with that here's what the top looks like i was really on the fence with the finished look here i like the whirlwood and also the finished look it's a nice combination now i know if i paint the leg white this is going to give off a better contrast between the light color and the dark color there's no going back i put on a coat of primer and then i finished it off with a oil based white paint all right so the final step here is to put on some sort of protective shield on it and i'm going to just use some white bomb pilot just to make it feel a little better to the touch minus the paint and stain this is a 50 desk 46 dollars to be exact this is a sleek design that's waiting on your personal touch you can make your desk more exciting with cooler diys like this lamp or even this wireless charger by the way the best one so far i don't have to remove my case to use it so if you need a desk or you just want to update your existing space this is a great contender perfect for kids and adults this is a great weekend project and i think most people would be excited to work on this but with diy creators fashion i can't let you guys leave without seeing leds on this thing if you're building this for a kid the leds are a must and this kit is the perfect length for this desk coming in at just under 15 dollars and that should bring your desk total to around 61 if you had leds so to install this i'm going to run the led across the apron and when we get to that corner it's going to be hard to bend the led and you may not like that stress on it to take the stress off of that i'm going to cut the led and install this extension you need to remove the adhesive on the back of the led strip so you can slide it under the metal prong and then close the clip now continue laying the rest of the led strip i'll also secure the connectors with these rubber clips it came with i also added another clip towards the bottom to hold the harness down just came from my led stash now test it to make sure your connection is good before you continue so on the bright side the leds look pretty good and they work the downside is i don't really like the way the leds flow across the top in order to get that glow on the wall that i usually like i have to put the strip of the led on the back of the desktop so i'm just going to relocate the strip and we'll be back in business this is the look i was intending to get love the way this came out [Music] [Applause] i hope you enjoyed this build it was a very fun one and you know simple process just being able to take some regular dimensional lumber and make something really cool and inexpensive big thanks to topcashback for sponsoring this video please go check them out link in the description and again if you're new i'm glenn welcome to the channel and be sure to like comment and subscribe see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: DIY Creators

Views: 2,175,968

Keywords: DIY, DIY Creators, woodworking, diy desk, homemade desk, computer desk, custom desk, desk tour, desk ideas, dream desk, best desk setup, how to, desk setup, how to build a desk, do it yourself, gaming setup, how to make, how to make a desk, home office desk, desk build, computer desk build

Id: 9dWzupkBcNU

Length: 13min 58sec (838 seconds)

Published: Sun May 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/g_st_lt]

This guy's videos are great. I wish there was more of this kinda stuff when I first got into woodworking. Every single thing I saw back then was like "All you need is a table saw, drill press, planer, jointer, bandsaw, a CNC, and some Lie-Nielsen chisels."

[u/KCCOfan]

Love this style of instructional. Great job!👍

[u/[deleted]]

Under $50 in wood*

...With about $2000 in tools ;)

Very nice video and craftsmanship.

[u/DREW390]

Good video but Joining wood has never worked out well for me.

[u/nhh]

You are very talented.

[u/potomoc]

Excellent work!