Studio711.com – Ben Martens

We have a closet underneath our stairs that opens out into the kitchen and family room area. That’s where a lot of our cleaning supplies get stored along with extra trash bags, paper towels, etc. We’ve always wanted to have that be a little more organized so I embarked on a small project to build some shelves and cabinets.

I started by designing the project with Google Sketchup. I’m really liking that tool and hope to use it more. It’s a great way to visualize the design decisions and then also to take measurements of the various pieces that need to be cut. The entire project was built out of 1/2” MDF with a little bit of 1/4” MDF for some facing. I cut everything to size first and painted it before I assembled it. I’ve never painted/stained a project BEFORE putting all the pieces together but it sure made painting a lot easier. I’ll probably try that again, but I won’t do it for a project like this where everything needs to fit precisely into a pre-defined space. As I started installing it, I realized that the closet wasn’t square so I ended up with some goofy looking gaps and pieces that didn’t fit quite right. The pictures below show it loaded up with our supplies and honestly you can’t see most of the issues. I do need to cover up the screw holes around the door (this would have been a good use for a finish nailer) but that should be pretty quick.

I got to use some new tools in this project. The table saw was a huge help as I was able to make big, repeatable cuts very quickly. I don’t miss crawling around on the floor, clamping a straight edge onto the big sheet and then using the circular saw to make each cut. I also made good use of a self-leveling laser that I got for Christmas. It made it super easy to attach the closet support pieces to the wall and get everything at the same height.

All in all I’m happy with how quickly this project came together (7 days from first cut to final install). If I can’t learn to live with the gaps then I’ll either rebuild part of it or add some trim, but something tells me that probably won’t happen. I learned a lot from this project and will probably put the skills to use again in one of our upstairs storage closets.

Part 1 showed the cabinets going in. Part 2 talked about building and finishing the desk surface. Once that was all done, it was time to install the desk!

The two desk pieces fit into their spots pretty well. There were some non-square walls that I had to deal with and it required a bit of sanding on one end for a good fit, but overall, it wasn’t too bad. The oak desk surface was screwed to the cabinets and supports from the bottom up. I added a couple 45 degree angle supports just to ensure that the desk was solid. I was able to put all my weight on the biggest span so it should be ok.

After installing it, I drilled a hole for the cords to snake down under the desk and installed a grommet. This was one of the most nerve-wracking parts of the build. I had to take a giant hole saw and cut through this piece of wood that I had spent weeks building. Thankfully it went smoothly.

Once it was all assembled, I realized that the surface was an inch or two too high. I’m a big guy so I like a tall desk, but this was too much. When I designed this, I had only accounted for the height of the cabinets and forgot to include the thickness of the desk and the spacers I had to put under the cabinets so the doors wouldn’t scrape against the carpet as they opened. It wasn’t a huge deal though because I knew I could use a keyboard tray. I don’t generally like keyboard trays because I feel like they are too small or too flimsy so I decided to build my own. I ordered 14” slides and then used some leftover oak plywood to build a keyboard tray that is almost 3 feet wide and over a foot deep. Now THAT is a keyboard tray! It’s rock solid and plenty big enough.

After that was all done, it was time to move in. I ran all the cables and tried to start with some nice cable organization. One of my favorite features is this little cord manager which sits to the left of my keyboard. It holds all of the little USB dongles that I use regularly (micro USB, mini USB, smart card reader, etc) so that I don’t have to go digging through a door or under my desk to find the right one.

I’ve started cleaning up the pile of boxes that used to be up against this wall. A lot of it is getting thrown away or donated, but the remainder is getting organized into the cabinets. Once that is done and I finish a couple other house projects, I would like to build some small shelves under the desk to the right of where my desk chair is to help even out that space. Right now that opening looks a little lopsided. I also need to add some handles on the drawers and cabinet doors. Those parts can wait a little while though.

This was a huge project, but I’m very proud of the way it turned out. I did it for about $3500 less than a contractor would have charged me. It’s not overly fancy, but it gets the job done.

Part 1 showed the cabinets going in. Once that was done, I added two sets of quad outlets above what will be the desk surface. Each quad outlet contains two outlets that are built-in surge protectors. This seemed useful for things like printers and scanners which will sit on the desk surface.

The length of the wall wasn’t an even multiple of the cabinet sizes I had available so I couldn’t stretch cabinets all the way to the end of the wall. Instead I wrapped some custom shelves around that corner. This is my least favorite part of the project, but they were cheap and functional. I can replace them later if I come up with something better. I bought some 10” metal supports and a couple melamine boards. I cut the boards to fit, ironed white veneer on the exposed ends and mounted them.

Next it was time for the hardest part of the job: building a desk surface. I went through a ton of different ideas from buying a bunch of boards to make a butcher block style table and using laminate flooring. This kept me up nights. I won’t go into details but there were a bunch of requirements that seemed to conflict. Finally I decided to build it with 3/4” sheets of oak plywood and face it with 1” strips of solid oak.

I had to build the desk in two parts in order to get it up the stairs into the room. One piece was an L-shape with a 45-degree angle where I’ll sit and the other wise was a simple 2’x8’ rectangle with a notch cut out of one corner to accommodate a support structure in the wall. I don’t have a table saw (yet) so all of the big cuts were done on the garage floor using a clamped straight edge to guide my circular saw. It’s not the most glamorous way to make cuts, but it sure works well even with one person. (The blue tarps were set up to cover my shelves and to block off the third bay where I was working in an effort to control dust.)

The building work went pretty quickly once I got started. The L-shape part was two pieces of plywood joined together with biscuits and glue. The facing went all the way around the desk and was also attached with biscuits and glue. There are no nails in the whole thing so the surfaces are pristine. I bought some 48” clamps and got good at using them as I slowly attached each piece of oak to face the plywood.

Once the building part was complete, I nervously set about staining the desk. It’s a huge surface and I’m no expert. A new 5” random orbital sander helped immensely as I got the surfaces prepped. I ran through 120 grit, 150 grit, and 220 grit sand paper.  I figured I needed to do each piece in one pass so that the stain would be put on roughly even. I started by doing the bottoms of both pieces, made my mistakes there and then did the tops. After the stain I applied three coats of polyurethane (the bottom only got one coat.) Given the cool weather, I wanted to let everything dry extra long so I did one coat per day. That stretched the project out a long time, but in the end, I had a desk surface that I was pretty proud of.

Next up: Installation and finishing touches

The only want I’m able to distract people from the pile of boxes and junk along the wall in the man cave is with a 110” screen. On that same wall, I also had a tiny little cheap desk and chair setup that have been progressively getting worse and worse over the years. I had grand visions for what that area of the room could be, and after completing a bunch of other home projects, it was time to tackle this one.

My first decision was whether to do this myself or contract it out. To get a rough idea of material costs, I did a drawing in Google Sketchup using the dimensions of Ikea cabinets. I then got a bid from a contractor for one of these online cabinet places. The contractor’s design was definitely nicer than what I drew, but it was about 2.5 times the cost. While getting that bid might feel like a waste of time, it helped me a lot throughout the project because I knew how much money I was saving.

The cabinets were the first big steps in the project after the planning was done. They were quick to assemble and very easy to hang even with only one person. The design of the cabinets is really intelligent and allows me to easily swap shelves for drawers or vice versa if I ever want to later. I could also upgrade the cabinet facing without too much cost. I still need to pick out door pulls and cabinet handles but I’ll probably do that at the end.

Next up: shelving along the left side of the cabinets and a desk surface.