When my husband took over the office to work at home, I decided to take over the dining room that we didn’t use very often. I wanted a really big desk!
I had a very large wall that just screamed for a very big desk. I couldn’t find one not under $1,000 so I started looking at at possibly just converting an old wooden desk into a bigger desk.
I wanted the file cabinets on either end and I wanted it to open because I move around a lot and I usually have a standing desk but I wanted to be able to put a chair at it for when I wanted to have a sitting desk but I didn’t want it floating around. This option seemed to work.
I got lucky and finally found a solid wooden desk with two file cabinets in it at a local thrift store for $35. I started looking for a top and I thought about butcher block but I didn’t want to spend $300 on butcher block so we looked in the wood department and found 1 ft wide boards that were pretty solid and 10 ft long for only 30 bucks each. We bought two. Worked out perfect.
The two boards were the exact same width as the filing cabinets. Once we had all the stuff we started disassembling the desk. We ended up prying off the top and the back very easily.
Actually it was just a few screws. Then I sanded down and painted the filing cabinets and then we mocked up the top and put it in the space to see. And we ended up going with 9 ft long.
So then we assembled it in place and I pre-painted and pre-stained everything.
We got it in place and then we constructed support boards for underneath to make sure it stayed strong and I stained all the front boards as well and then we decided to do a trim piece in the front.
For $100 total. I love this desk. It is perfect for my uses. May not be what you like but I love it!
