Integrated Desk
Contoured Desk with built in media cupboard
Summary
After I built this bookcase I had the idea to extend one of the shelves into a desk, making the whole integrated unit span a complete 8m wall of the living room. I had refurbished my office along with most of the rest of the house, but it is useful to have a spare desk for visitors, and for controlling the VR / Projector gaming rig.So I set about building a desk from the same materials as the bookcase (mostly).
Materials & Process
As this desk continued the line of one of the shelves of the bookcase I’d previously made, I stuck with the same theme for materials. I used a 3m beech countertop, copper piping for the upstanding legs, oak for the feet for each leg, and pine board to make the ‘media unit’. I also used stainless steel mesh spray-painted black for the vents above the radiator.
I started out by making the desktop. I wanted an L shape with pleasant curves, which ultimately ended up the same dimensions as the shelf this’d butt up against. First I designed a template in cardboard, cut a ply template out with a jigsaw, and then used this with a router to cut the final shape. I added a hole for cables, 4 recesses to capture the legs, and 3 vent channels as part of this desk would go over a radiator.
Next I used pineboard to form the media cupboard. Here I left special cutaways, holes, and vents, so that my gaming rig and av receiver could be connected and vented. I added a little draw for USB sticks etc. and a cutaway on the top which can be easily removed where visitors could plug laptops in (power, Cat5 network, HDMI to the projector.) I finished it in Farrow and Ball paint.
Finally I made the legs and feet, cutting copper piping down to size, and turning the feet on my metalworking lathe.
I’m an absolute novice with a lathe, and this being a metal working lathe, I had to modify it somewhat, (making an upstand from steel, and getting a new chuck), to get it to play ball with this oak. But I was happy with the results.