Thanks to Ana White’s site – I developed an interest into knocking off some furniture that was like the ones from the big stores costing upwards to a thousand dollars. So when I came across the corner desk plan I knew I had to make it.
Firstly the final product:
I didn’t take as many pictures as I should have for blogging purposes – well for one I wasn’t sure it would even turn out being my first diy project building anything.
I went out and bought a circular saw, some nails and a Kreg Jig. The circular saw was just one for around $100 on sale, and came with its own straight line edge to help me cut straight – which turned out I would still cut some on angles – now how did that happen? but only off by 1/8″ so I was still able to build everything.
I ended up getting the Kreg K4MS Master System. It has everything I need and will be used greatly in future projects – and was a must for me to line up my shelves perfectly.
Firstly read the plans on Ana White’s site – reread, look it over – and if you don’t understand ask or read again. Once I felt comfortable, on to home depot I went to get some wood – turns out they have a lot of warping wood so you must be picky. Even then some wood after it had gone in the garage ended up warping again! I made do though and everything lined up with some adjustments.
I created the corner desk table top in the link above, and used the link to build 2 drawers for each side – except on the one side I ended up making 2 smaller ones + a bigger one to match the one in the PB stores.
On to some pictures (which were taken by an old blackberry – again didn’t think this project would actually turn out as good as it did or I would have taken pictures with a proper camera):
Click for a larger version of the picture!
Here you can see the table top and the 5 drawers that were built. This was in the white primer coat being done. The primer I used was Zinsser BIN. The reason was I used pine as the wood and it had several knots in different areas. The zinsser primer – specifically BIN is supposed to do a good job in hiding them and not allowing them to bleed through. Since I was painting it white – I did NOT want bleed through.
This next image shows the actual shelf / drawers – with the sliders already mounted.
The sliders did need some adjusting once the drawers went in to line up properly and to open without any problems.
The sliders I used were two kinds:
Self closing full extension slides from lee valley for the bigger drawers (rated 100 lbs)
Full extension slides from lee valley for the smaller drawers (rated 75 lbs)
After some more weekends in the garage and following the rest of ana’s plans and putting everything together I ended up with this:
It fit perfectly under my window and beside my air vent!! Loved that I knew sizes beforehand and was able to make it perfect to match and fit in this area.
I did not use label holders – really never write anything on them anyways – and decided to go for some rope pulls from anthropologie.
You can go to their site to see the rope pulls here. I think they add a different flair to them while still looking good. The paint used was Benjamin Moore Antique White. Here is a picture of the can with the actual ingredients mixed:
So that’s it really for stage 1 of the desk build. But I wanted to go further to add the top hutch area that seemed to be missing on the Ana White site. Let’s see if a web dev can get his math right and mock up something to match the retailers design while still doing a diy project with no plans! So on a piece of paper I drew up a rough plan and away I went.
This is what I ended up with – the top hutch primed but still in pieces (although you can see it coming together):
Primed but in almost final “hutch” state:
After that I added the handle to the hutch drawer and finished painting and it was ready to go in the room. The final results with the hutch!
While I don’t have the plans out for the hutch – if there is enough interest I will find my scrape piece of paper with measurements and try and make a semi-intuitive plan that will work to get your own hutch. Without the Hutch the desk space seems massive! With this it bring its down perfectly to work.
Comments? Questions? Leave them below.
