Home & Garden, office

And to (desk) top it all off…

January 11, 2016 by Elaine No Comments

Hello friends! Happy New Year! I hope you all had a lovely holiday and are refreshed and ready to tackle 2016. I know I am.

When I last left you in the office it was looking like this…

Inspiring no?

No.

At the same time I also shared a vision board and floor plan (direction) for our little “bonus room” to be turned office/games/extra guest room. You can find more details here if you’d like to read more about that.

The vision…

The plan…

First on our agenda was completing our custom made double desk along the back wall. I was inspired by desks like the ones below and thought something like them could really work for us.

top source / bottom source

I am happy to report that we got to gettin’ and have made some progress. It now looks like this!

We have yet to stain the top (obvs) but let me share how we got this far.

First, Chef Kev assembled the four bases. All are from the Ikea Alex line. The two end units are these and the two middle ones are these.

Lucky for us, one of Chef Kev’s buddies is a carpenter. Score! So naturally I turned to him and begged/pleaded asked nicely if he could help us out. Other than giving him the dimensions and showing him some images of what I had in mind, I stayed out of his way. He’s the pro after all.

Adam (the buddy) brought the desk top over in two pieces (she’s a biggin’). And she’s oak (well a veneer anyway) for those wondering.

To join the pieces together he used a biscuit joint system along with some hardware which secured the two pieces together on the underside.

Here’s a close up of the biscuit.

And here’s a close up of the actual biscuit that is relevant to this post.

Adam flipped the desk top over and got ready to join the two pieces together.

I was in and out of the room as he worked on this getting my little guy ready for bed (and trying not to be an annoying hoverer) but from what I saw, he joined these two parts by using some wood glue and sliding them together.

Oh, and incase you are wondering what the middle darker piece is, it’s a really cool textural detail that he added, which I will show more of later.

Then he secured the two pieces further with a piece of hardware known as a countertop connector. News to me. I had never seen anything like this. Cool.

Then he flipped the whole shebang over.

See the cool middle piece? Doesn’t it add a neat detail? I can’t wait to stain it and really bring out the different grains there.

As well, you can see in the above photo that Adam used a spacer piece and raised the desk top up versus placing it directly on the cabinets. That’s because I had asked for the top to look thick (have some weight to it which balanced the look of the desk against the cabinets) versus it being thin. To create this effect, Adam attached a front strip around the whole top. It makes it look more substantial and offers a nice finished edge too. Win-win!

Here’s a shot of the desk from the underside so that you can see the front lip and how it all relates a bit better…

Then, Adam secured the top to the cabinets by drilling up through the inside of the cabinets into the underside of the wood.

Next, he added some holes for our computer cords. We found the placement we liked the best and Adam used a circle drill bit to make the holes.

We chose dark desk grommets since we’ll be staining the top dark.

One of my favourite parts is that we were able to (pretty much) hide all of our cords! Adam drilled and cut a few holes and openings into the one of the end units.

And now we have a place to hide all our cords, the power bar and internet equipment (except for one piece that needs to be kept on the desk top for proper reception).

I know that this looks messy inside but it was explained to me to leave the wires loose versus tying them up neat and tidy. The tighter they are, the hotter they become. Since it’s not necessary to have them bound, I let them hang out to play with each other. Loosey goosey.