instructables

Plywood Desk for Double Home Office

by linus strothmann

OK, so here is the problem: My wife and I suddenly
have to work from home. This wasn't even an option
before and with an apartment of ve bedrooms and
four kids we actually don*t have a room for it. Only
option: our bedroom. With all the chaos that comes
with a bunch of kids, we have tried to keep our
bedroom as tidy as possible. The idea that we would
have to turn this room into an o ce was a little
nightmare for me. So I decided: If we put a desk in
there, it should be two things:
1. It should look really nice and incorporate some
design elements that will make it seem like it was only
built for this room.
2. Everything that is on the desk while we work needs
to go into drawers in the evening, so that the
bedroom becomes a bedroom again.
Our house is insulated with straw-bales and the inside
is plastered with clay. All the corners of the clay
plastering are rounded. So I measured the radius of
these corners and used that as the basis for the
design.
Here is a video about the process:
https://youtu.be/ZkiagzZymEs
Ok, let's get started!
Supplies:
The desk is made from one sheet (2,5m*1,25m) of
18mm birch plywood. Only other supplies are drawer-
slides and a couple of 15mm plywood pieces for the
drawers.

Here is the Link for the CNC:

The solution: this plywood desk with at but very
large drawers and rounded feet that take up a shape
https://easel.inventables.com/projects/IDviEZe4OEplp
already existent in our room.
XLe5ug9wA

https://youtu.be/ZkiagzZymEs

Plywood Desk for Double Home Office: Page 1

Step 1: Cutting the Plywood
Plywood Desk for Double Home Office: Page 2
The rst thing to do is to have a good look at your After that I cut out four pieces of 77+31cm. These are
plywood sheet and decide where your desktop is the pieces that go on the cnc (in my case an x-carve)
going to be cut out. It's the only piece where the and later make up the four legs, leg support plus
surface is visible, everything else will be cut anyway. sides of the desk.

I cut out this piece rst, for my desk it was 70*176cm. Then it's time to cut 2cm strips of plywood for the
Since cutting a whole board on the table saw can be back and the sides.
tricky, I cut it a little oversize rst and later cut the real
dimensions. The dimensions are as follows:

Backpanel: four pieces 2* 136cm (width of the desk so: eight pieces 2*60cm for the drawers, four pieces
minus 40cm) 2*16cm for the centre front.

Front:
the front consist of two drawers 60cm wide and a
centre piece 16cm wide (width of the desk minus
40cm minus drawers)
Last you will need to cut ten pieces 37cm long to
make a panel out of which to cut rounded corners.
Ok, everything cut: let´s use the cnc then.

Step 2: CNC-Cutting Side and Leg Elements

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The table has a top 18mm, then four "layers" of 18mm
all around, so this adds up to 5*18mm= 9cm. I wanted
the desk to be about 72cm, so I decided to make 38
pieces for each leg, so that I had enough spares. I
ended up using 34 pieces, so my desk is a total of
34*1,8+9=eg need 38 pieces of 18mm, adding up to
70,2cm. I kept four pieces so that I can still make it
higher if I want to.
So in total we need four U-shaped pieces for each side
of the desk, eight in total and 38*4= 152 leg pieces.
Additional the legs need an L-shaped support, which
is made form the cutout left after the cnc is nished
(you can see it on the picture, it needs rounded edges,
which I did with a round-over- bit) because otherwise
the small cutout doesn`t t properly). All of these
pieces I put on four sheets of plywood each 77*31cm.
For each board the x-carve needed 3 hours, so in total
it was used for twelve hours. I used this time to do
other projects and glue up the front and backpanels.
Plus, after the rst one was done, I cleaned the edges
and so on...

Step 3: Gluing Up Front and Back Panels

This is a straigth forward job.

Lay out the 2cm wide pieces and glue them together.

I actually cut these longer originally and cut them to nal size after they were glued up. It makes a much cleaner
cut, then trying to get them lined up perfectly.

Also, while the CNC keeps cutting you can sand these really ush.

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Step 4: Making Drawers

Another thing that can be done while letting the CNC cut out all the leg and side pieces is to make drawers.

I did it in a very simple way and used some 15mm plywood I had lying around and simply glued up the drawers so
that there was enough space for hidden drawer slides at the side. There is a hundred ways to make drawers,
depending on what tools you have. I use my old lamello for this.

Step 5: Gluing the Side Panels

When the CNC is done you can glue up the two sidepanels. It is absolutely crucial to be very precise here, because
otherwise it will be di cult to t in the L-shaped leg support. I found it easier to glue two at a time and then glue
two and two together once the glue was dry (I only have a foto of the rst i did, where I glued all four pieces
together at the same time.)

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Step 6: Gluing Up All Side, Back and Front Panels
So after you have glued up all the individual panels
it's time to glue it all to the underside of the desk top.
I added four pieces of 15mm plywood that go from
front to back and to which the drawerslides will be
attached. again I used lamellos, but you can also use
just glue or even pocket screws (in this case you have
to be really carefull not to go through to the top of
the desk...would be a shame)
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I layed everything out and attached it with clamps to
make sure everything really t. Then I only took o the
part I was preparing and gluing on, instead of taking
everything o and then glueing everything on at
once.
I also tested if the drawers t in... just in case.
Good luck!
Plywood Desk for Double Home Office: Page 7
Step 7: Attaching the Leg-support

Once the actual desktop plus sidepanels are done, the screw to attach them to the desktop.
next step is to attach the L-shaped leg supports.
This could be done in a lot of di erent ways. I made
I wanted to be able to take the legs o , so I decided to small round pieces with the cnc in which I hammered
use screws here. small t-nuts and then glued them under the L-shaped
leg support. Then I drilled a hole and sat a small screw
The L-shaped leg support t very snug into the resees in.
in the corners of the sidepanels, so I only used one

Plywood Desk for Double Home Office: Page 8

Plywood Desk for Double Home Office: Page 9
Step 8: Yeah: Making the Legs!
Now this is the step you'll be waiting for: glueing up
all those 150 pieces together to make those nice
looking legs.
Important: The rst piece should only be glued to the
legsupport, NOT TO THE SIDEPANEL!!
Otherwise the leg wont' be detachable.
After the rst one is on, it is all straight forward. Put
glue on, press on. Sometimes I needed a hammer to
get them tightly down, and very often I used a clamp
Plywood Desk for Double Home Office: Page 10
to press them rmly on to the legsupport.
This is a really rewarding job!!
When all four legs are done you can turn the table
around to get a feeling for it. when I did this I decided
it was a little bit too shaky. So I added two strips of
2cm plywood next to the leg support. Make sure to
only glue these to the leg, not to the sidepanel. After
that the table was really stable.
Step 9: Attaching the Drawers

you could do this step before doing the legs or after, it doesn't really matter. How the drawers are attached
depends entirely on the sliders you use. I can only recommend to use high quality sliders!

Step 10: Adding Rounded Corners to the Legs

This is optional, but I think it makes the table look so much better.

I cut two circles on the cnc and then cut out the leftover of these circles into eight pieces, that I then glued to the
legs. Again be careful not to glue them to the sidepanels, remember those detachable legs!

I started with clamps, but this is a much easier job with good tape.

Plywood Desk for Double Home Office: Page 11

Step 11: Making Things Even More Round

So until now everything is round except your desktop. I cut it rough with a Japanese hand saw and then used a
router with a ush-trim-bit.

Plywood Desk for Double Home Office: Page 12

When that is done it is time to round over all edges. I used a big radius round-over-bit on the top, and a small one
for everything else.

Step 12: Sanding and Finish

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Time to sand! After everything is really nice, take a cloth and clean
the whole desk.
I used a belt-sander to get everything ush and then
sanded everything, including the top, by hand Then use whatever nish you prefer.
afterwards.
Since it is going into our bedroom I decided to use
I wouldn`t recommend to use anything too rough and just linseed oil. Looks nice, I think.
powerful on the rounded legs, because you`ll never
get it looking so round again, once you've taken o to
much... better by hand.

Step 13: Now: Go to Work!!

Ok, so that was that. I really enjoyed building this and I am super happy about it. I am going to do a couple of
smaller tables for plants in the same style soon....

Now we can both work from home, without ruining our nice bedroom...

If you need any help with the CNC les, let me know.

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video is finally ready and included in the instructable

Love the curves on the legs and how they match the curve on the walls.

Plywood Desk for Double Home Office: Page 15

This is absolutely beautiful! As said previously, it really takes plywood up many levels. I look
forward to your smaller tables.
thanks!

I'm a big fan of making a feature of ply-edge, but this is next level. Beautiful piece, and I love the
way you make the legs. Thank you for sharing your work, and good luck in the competition :-)
thanks a lot alex! I think the legs can still be optimized, maybe I will do that on the next smaller
piece...
"The legs can still be optimized"
If you didn't think that _everything_ could be optimized then you wouldn't be a maker :-)
Do post the enhancement when you develop it.

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