Big oak desk from kitchen worktops

Hack a couple of Ikea 'Numerar' kitchen worktops into a 3 meter long oak desk.

Step 1: Get & hack wood

Buy the kitchen worktops: 1 x 246 cm for the 3 legs, 3 x 186 cm for the two tops and for the supporting beams.

Get to somebody in your family or to a friend or to a really friendly woodshop owner and have them cut the wood to the right lengths. To hard a job to do this with your regular DIY woodsaw ;)

See picture for lengths that I used, but feel free to alter where needed.

Comments

[dmillbank]

Do you know what the workshop called these connectors or where I could purchase some?

[martamarta]

i love it! looks like something from an expensive design store! Two questions: I was surprised to read in the ikea instructions that the counter top requires screwed in installation to prevent warping plus regular oil treatment for the first two months. Did you oil treat your desk as instructed? Or is it fine as-is for normal desk use i.e. not much exposure to water... Although i was wondering about the heat of a hot laptop.. Anywhoo, thanks for any follow-up!

[Bleek11]

Dear martamarta,

thanxz! I've been away for a couple of weeks, so that accounts for my delayed reply to you, my apologies...

I haven't oil treated the wood and it still looks great. The part just in front of my keyboard is only slightly darker than the rest, but it still looks pretty much new even today. We've had the desk for more than two years now.

We have no issue with warping. Do take into account though that the top consists of two different parts and as always when working with wood you have to accept that every part has its own character. Meaning: the two parts have a slightly different 'curve' and the join in the middle is in some areas off by a millimeter or two. But this was the same when I just constructed it and still is today. No further warping whatsoever...

Heat of a laptop has no effect of any kind, 4 cm of solid oak wood probably is not affected by this, based on two years of heavy laptop use on the desk.

Good luck if you're gonna try it, if you have other questions don't hesitate.

Greetings!

[henry.j.holland]

The 'wooden connectors' would be called dowels i expect :-)

[Transquesta]

Excellent idea! (Meanwhile, I'm trying to turn a pretty granite kitchen countertop into a wrap-around computer desk "along the same theme.")

[Bleek11]

Thanks! Good luck with your own project! Pretty hard stuff to work with that granite...

[atombomb1945]

Awesome and looks like it's nice and solid too.

[Bleek11]

Thnxz! Thankfully it is pretty solid. I kept away from glueing the whole thing together, which would have been stronger for sure, because I live on the third floor with very narrow and twisting stairs all the way up. I needed to be able to disassemble the whole thing to take it with me when I will move. By using the hardened steel construction material it still is very solid...

[jeff-o]

How much did the materials cost? I'm thinking of building my own desk, and it would sure be nice to have a solid wood work surface.

[Bleek11]

You can look up the cost of the worktops. Over here the worktops cost €129 for the three 186cm tops and €169 for the 249cm top: €556 in total for the wood. Then the construction material is relatively cheap if you have all the tools you need (like a drill and that kind of stuff): about €50. So I would say the costs are around €600-€650 for materials and then the cost of your own time you have to put in ;)