New desks

getmore4less

Or just cut a board as legs against the walls and one in the middle at the join.

MrsStepford

We went for the easy option of L ahape engineered wood and metal desk from Wayfair. Unfolded, ckipped and in place in 5 mins and 91.99 with free delivery from Wayfair. Same desk on Amazon was £109

DD265

We've changed our plans slightly. Instead of having desks 2 boards deep against the wall, we're going 3 boards deep on all sections, and cutting the main desks narrower so I can still walk past comfortably. The PC towers will go on the wall sides anyway, so we'll have sufficient space in front of us. This gives the added benefit of keeping the IKEA Alex cupboards and drawers for storage - and we actually just went for a second set of drawers tonight (it was very busy as you might imagine), so we have two of each, which will be combined with four frames.

The current struggle is wood filler. We've started sanding the 'worst' board to experiment - and they'll come up lovely - but we bought the Ronseal 'Light' wood filler having looked at all the labels in the shop and it's ORANGE, like terracotta, even after drying/sanding. Ronseal 'Natural' might be more what we're after, then there's Everbuild 'Pine' and 'Light Oak', but it's very difficult to work it out without seeing it open in person. We'll be able to use 'Light' elsewhere so it won't be wasted, and I'm hoping we get it right second time.

We've decided that we will stain/varnish the desk tops to a medium brown (more research needed on the actual finish to use). OH wants the tops totally smooth and I'm going to introduce him to the concept of good enough! He's talked about resin (too much effort) and glass (too expensive) but I'm confident we'll be able to fill and sand them to a good finish. Whether we'll need to plane them at all remains to be seen.

DD265

The boards needed more drying out than anticipated; we moved them from the integral garage into the living room, and bought a cheap moisture meter from Amazon to keep tabs on them. I've grouped the boards today so we need to take the plunge and crack on. The boards were sanded before coming inside and whilst filler is needed, they do look nice. I'd happily keep them the 'raw' colour but OH wants to stain them warmer.

We've got the right wood filler now (Ronseal Natural), plus some wood glue and dowels. Found some big enough - but cheap - clamps and the frames are in the garage. They ended up costing about £160 for 4 - not cheap! But by the look of them they'll last forever, and it was important to both of us to get this right. A mitre saw was also purchased and this will be it's first project, but we have a few more in mind later.

The idea is to dowel & glue 3 boards, then make a start filling the other 9 whilst those dry, and work in rotation. Several areas will need multiple coats of filler so I think this part alone could take a week or two. OH plans to fit batons, and I am not sure whether we'll do it straight away or after the glue has dried. I didn't think we'd need to plane the edges of any boards to fit them together, but we do have a hand plane if we need it. I suspect we'll end up planing some of the flat surface but if we have to do that by hand it'll be a big job, so we'll see...

At the moment we've agreed not to top them with anything. We considered acrylic but that a) significantly adds to the cost, and b) brings it's own complications. We'll see how the finish turns out, and we've got the luxury of time thankfully as we've retained our existing desks. The room is all done (barring some artwork, and we want limited edition rather than mass produced so it'll wait) ready for the desks. Our time will be split between doing these and decorating the spare bedroom; alas we don't have any holiday until Christmas week so it's all got to fit in around work.