home built desk - surface?
 

Ok, so every time I've gotten a room in the house to use as an office, the mother-in-law moved in or we had a kid. Mother-in-law dead long time now, oldest kid off to college or at least an apartment.

No desk. Been working in my old spot, which has a overly-tall hutch like thing and when I sit there typing even with the chair as high as I can put it I feel like I'm on a bike with ape hanger handle bars... Not to mention no room for anything much bigger than a single 23" wide screen monitor... I have 3 at the office.

Friday at noon said ***** it and did the expedient & cheap college dorm furniture thing - sheet of 1" sanded marine ply cut in half long ways and a couple of two drawer filing cabinets. Ah... ergonomics. Comfy chair the right height and nice big wide deep desk to match it :)

Still need to get out the hole saw and get some pass-thrus drilled and installed for cables, etc. and I need some half round to turn the sharp square edges into nice rounded ones but I'll also need to put some sort of surface/finish on it.

Suggestions? I'm thinking some sort of spray on or roll on poly. This will be my do-all work area so gun cleaning chemicals, computer bits and bobs, fishing stuff, etc.

Also I'm thinking of either drilling, counter sinking and bolting the top to the filing cabinets or perhaps just using some gorilla snot glue to attach 'em kinda permanent like. Being the cheap lazy guy I am, I'm leaning towards the glue....

Plain old patina is fun. Every stain, like a scar, has a story...

A "perfect" paint coating would drive me nuts once it gets nicked. Especially with the duty you propose.

Find my thread about staining a table with black ink. We tested a scrap at herroberst’s place that looked great.

Bolt, don’t glue. What are you, a ricer?

Laminate is easy. Glue an piece larger piece on the plywood. Router the edge flush with a bearing flush bit. It will be almost professional.

Even better would be to glue two pieces of ply before the laminate. No flexy.

The gun cleaning chemicals is likely a killer against ANY finish you put on the table. I made a 3" round blemish on our kitchen table before I realized how much damage it would cause. Consider that it's a strong enough solvent to loosen lead remnants - it's very dangerous to any furniture finish.

I was Ikea the other day looking through the 'as is' section. Lots of kitchen panels and shelves that would make great workbench tops or desk tops, really durable finishes, And dirt cheap.

If you really want to be cheap, go to Home Depot and get a piece of their P Lam, or Formica kitchen countertop and cut to size. If you look hard enough and are not picky about color, the typical beige tops can be had for 60-80 bucks for about 4-5'. Forget making it yourself. If you want to be cheaper, get a none drilled (for locks) hollow core door and cut to any size you like. shoot some foam in the cut section to keep it lasting longer. Use double sided tape and stick it on top of your file cabinets. It can be done within an hour. All my job site desk are made that way with old doors from the job sitting on top of saw horses.

I got Ikea kitchen counter top for desk
walnut

https://www.ikea.com/be/nl/images/pr..._S5.JPG?f=xxxl

got that with floating wall mounts, so no visible supports.. really clean install.
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/72/1c/df/7...be2eac9ef2.jpg

L shaped, Long end is 8 feet, short end by the windows (doubles as window sill) is 5 feet..
And my computer monitors hang off the wall, so my desk real estate is huuuuge..

Foam double stick tape. Easy and effective.

Cheap plexiglass or lexan for the top?