This is a budget friendly desk if you are looking for a creative space, virtual schooling for your kids or a work from home area. This very simple setup can be modified to any space. The desk can be smaller in width, a desk for one with 1 dresser on each side. I use the left side of the desk space for work (Theo typing here 👨💻) and on the right is an open area for either Ana or I to pull up our personal laptop to blog or we occasionally have crafty projects that we work on.
This is a quick build and can easily be accomplished in a weekend. The total cost for us: $280 – see our project checklist for details and links to everything.
The overall build of the desk is simple:
- 3 ikea dressers
- 3 wood planks (6 wide x12 long x1 thick) *If you don’t want to create the table top you can alternatively buy an Ikea counter top (If you look in the office section the table tops are double the price, go to the kitchen section and look at laminate counter tops) a lot less effort, linked here – We decided to make our own because we needed it to be a custom fit of 110 inches across
🔨 Tools needed:
- Basic power drill
- Kreg Jeg (you could get by with a flat brackets beneath to hold the wood boards together) Possibly a miter saw (you could try and use a manual wood saw to shorten the boards)
📦 Additional Materials purchased:
- Kreg screws
- Stain (Optional)
📝 Steps to complete:
- Assemble the IKEA dressers
- Cut wood planks to size
- Kreg Jeg (or bracket) wood planks
- Screw wood planks together
- Stain wood boards and let dry
- Put wood desk top on dressers
The setup was nice, we decided to stain the boards to add color to the room. A tip that we do when styling or making color decisions, step back and take a picture. That usually helps us visualize what the color scheme or style that we are going for because it’s easier to see the entire frame in one shot versus trying to visualize IRL. At this point we decided to add some color and used some leftover stain from our prior bench project.
We added a little corner shelf created with just two pieces of wood cut at a 45 held up with “L” brackets on the wall. Without the shelf we felt that our eyes were drawing horizontally but not vertically and that there was a lot of empty space above. So we put together the shelf and used it to upscale the desk a little more.
When the desk was all complete we felt so much more organized and it was easier to work on projects. Since we finished we (Jan 2019) we did a bit more to style the office set up. I recently was transitioned to WFH in May 2020 and I use this space every day.
I’m noting here a few things that were game changers to my desk:
- A NICE CHAIR (I have on/off lower back problems) – prior to the fully transition to WFH, I was using the plastic black chair and every day my lower back was wrecked. I’ll link to the chair here. If you have an expanded budget Herman miller chairs are supposedly incredible. The chair I bought is the off brand budget friendly option to a Herman miller chair and my back problems were erased.
- An additional monitor (2 and the laptop screen)
- A monitor mount (frees up desk top real estate)
- A top plug cord extender, these are from work and they are incredible. They are so great I had to buy an additional. I can easily plug in and out all of my chargers for either phones, laptops, or other electronics.
- Drawer rectangle/square organizers (not shown in the pictures but linked here)
- A more recent recommendation/purchase from my sis-in-law is a dock for all of the monitors and comp accessories. Linked here as well.
Project completed January 27, 2019