-

I decided to build the furniture for my home office myself for a number of reasons. The main advantages of building the furniture over buying standard stuff are

The Plan

So we drew up the plans in Visio as below. We went with the two desks in the corner to allow a big run of floor space so that a sofa bed could be expanded which allows us to use the office as a spare bedroom when necessary. As it was essential to get the basics up and running in the shortest possible time, we decided that the desks would be built first and then we would add the shelving later. So anything in green was given the top priority.

Building the Desks

The first thing to do with the desks was to build the framework. These were made of pre-planed 2 x 1.5 white deal on grounds of cost and availability. The framework was actually easy enough to build. I made cut-outs for the skirting board rather than removing the board as most of this was fairly well hidden. The framework was screwed into the wall in a few places. In addition to the basic frame, I put the structure in place for the cable box which I'll go into in a bit. Once this was all in place, I added some cross-bracing until I was satisfied with the structure's rigidity. Since the desktop itself would also add extra structural strength, this would lead to a good solid desk.

Once the structure was completely, it was a fairly simple job to cut the planks to length and build them up. The main problem encountered was that the walls were not exactly square which made the corner angles not exactly 90 degrees. This required a bit of extra sawing but was relatively easily addressed.

To finish everything off nicely, I routed both sides of the front plank to give a nice rounded look. Everything was varnished with a clear satin finish with three coats on the desk surfaces and two everywhere else.

The Cable Box

One of the biggest bugbears with most office furniture is that no matter how nice the design is, the inevitable rat's nest of cables associated with computers makes a complete mess of things. So I decided on a bit of a cunning plan to eliminate this issue. I decided to make the desk top from floorboards. As such I could construct a box beneath the desk to contain the cables and leave the plank above this box loose so that it could just be pulled up for access. With a few strategically placed holes for keyboard and monitor cables, this eliminates almost all cables from view.

The main drawback is that it is a bit of a pain for getting at cables, but this problem is largely solved by front USB cables. The only real problem is that I need an extra power cable for my laptop as this cannot be easily removed for travelling.

The cross-section of the desk top is shown below.

The Pedestal

I had a fairly deep pedestal unit that I had made for my previous home office. This was a reasonable match to the new desk with a white deal top and drawer fronts but with matt black sides. Since it would spend most of its life under the desk, that was fine. I built this unit big enough to hold a scanner on top and low enough that the scanner could be stored underneath the desk when not in use. The unit has three shallow drawers that run on kitchen drawer runners.

Shelving

The shelving was done quite a bit later. There are two main types - floor units and wall units. There are a couple of floor standing units which are build from floor to ceiling. About half of the height of the floor units is double depth to allow ring binders to be stored on them. The rest is single depth and mainly for storing paperback books. The wall units are about 1.1 metres high and are mainly for paperback books. These go from about a metre over the desk right to the ceiling. We have also used these shelves for CDs and cassette tapes.

The vertical supports for the shelves have their fronts left square while the fronts of the shelves are routed to within about an inch of their ends. Everything was sanded well before fitting, leaving only minor cleaning up to be done before varnishing. The varnish was clear with a satin finish.

What's left to do

In haven't built the two shelving units along the wall beside the window and probably won't do this as they are not necessary and would probably overly clutter the room.

There is also an unused door into the adjoining bathroom that is blocked by the desk. I would ultimately like to remove this door and block it up with a false wall.