DIY EDITING DESK

BY TOMORROW’S FILMMAKERS
($175 Not Including Legs)

Materials Needed
1. ($90) 9: 2 by 6 by 8s. I got 8 foot boards because I wanted my desk to be longer than 6 feet. If
you only want your desk to be 6 feet long, you can just get 2x6x6s.
2. ($12) Wood Finish Stain – you can choose any color depending on how dark or light you want
your desk. I decided to go with a darker color so I chose “honey.”
3. ($17) Crystal Clear Satin Based Polyurethane.
4. ($6) Titebond - Premium Wood Glue
5. ($10) Sandpaper – I would get multiple grades like 60/80/120
6. (Optional) Electric Sander. You could do all of this by hand, but an electric sander will save your
life
7. ($20) Pockethole Jig.
8. ($10) Kreg Screws – 2 1/2 inch
9. ($10) Right Angle Drill Attachment - depending on the legs and shelf support your choose.
10. Normal Build Materials - foam brush, angler, pencils, measuring tape, old washcloths.
11. Legs and Monitor Shelf Support. (For This Build)
4 – 30 inch black steel pipes.
8 -Black Steel Pipe Flange
4 - 1 ½ Black Steel Pipes
8 – Black Steel Pipe Flange
OR – ($40) Desk Legs at Home Depot

Step One – Determine The Size of Your Desk and Cut Your Wood
This desk is 6 ½ feet across. And 3 ½ feet deep. That requires 7 of our 2x6x8 boards for the main deck
and 2 of the 2x6x8 boards for the monitor shelf. We cut all 9 of our 8 foot boards to the right
dimensions for the workstation.

Step Two – Lay Your Boards Out

Once you cut your pieces, go ahead and lay them out on the ground or a table to determine which
boards you want where. Boards are always weird and some will fit together flush while others will not.
If you press them together and there is a small gap, try to move them around until you have little to no
gaps between the board. If there is also a blemish on the piece of wood you would like to hide, you can
determine that here and flip the boards over to get the best looking workstation.

Step Three – Pockethole Jig

Next, we are going to take our pockethole jig and drill a hole in each piece of wood going in both
directions. First, flip your boards upside down so the bottom of the desk is facing upwards.
Now you can add as many screws as you want, but I had 7 marks on each board, three screws will be
going in one direction and four screws will be going in the other direction. You will do this on every
board so we can screw them together. First, we make our marks on all the boards, then we use our
pockethole jig to make the holes. If you’ve never used a pocketholejig before, first you take the
measuring tool that they give you to measure the wood. You then set the drill attachment that comes
with it to that length which is 1 ½ inches. Set the base of the pocketjig to that same length as well.
You are then able to put that brace on the wood and drill a hole into the wood with the perfect
measurement for the drill to stop right at the end of the wood without going through the other end. We
place our jig on the marks that we made and we drill all the holes into the wood with four holes going
one direction and three holes going the other direction. You really need to make sure the jig doesn’t
move so you can either use a clamp, or do like I did and just stand on it. You just don’t want it to move
around. Once you have done that you should have a bunch of holes throughout the wood.
This will allow you to drill a screw into the other piece of wood without breaking through the other side.
Incredible little tool that is around $20 a Lowes and it is a necessity.

Step Four – Gluing and Screwing the Boards Together

This is where I completely messed up the first time and want to make sure you do not do the same. Put
these together on a completely flat floor. Don’t use a table top, or anything like that. If one part of the
desk is slightly off, it will be exaggerated as you add more boards to it and you will have a warped table
by the end. Use a garage floor or some flat surface. Now we want to have a little bit extra sturdiness
to the desk, so before we screw them together we add the titebond glue to the edge of the wood and
place them together. And if the glue oozes out and little bit, that is alright because we will be sanding it
later. We add the glue and start screwing the boards together with our 2 ½ inch kreg screws. We screw
the 4 screws going in one direction, then the three going the other direction. Then, we just keep adding
boards to it. We add glue, and place the another board, screwing them together and we do that with
every single board until we have a completed workstation. Be sure to also do this to your monitor shelf.

Step Five – Sanding

After that, we sand the table and monitor shelf. If you think you’ve sanded enough, sand some more.
You are going to have your arms on this desk all the time and if there is any roughness, you’ll start to get
really irritated and hate your desk. Even though we are going to put clear coat on the desk at the end,
that won’t help with rough surfaces. I use an electric sander, but you could sand it by hand if you’d like
to, but a cheap electric sander is around $35 at Lowes so I would suggest getting one. Do the top of the
desk and also all the edges and corners so it’s all nice and smooth. Once you have sanded it, it’s time to
add your stain. Now Make sure that all saw dust is off of the desk, I would use a leaf blower or
something to really get all of it off and even get a damp rag to just run over it a few times. You don’t
want to get the desk wet, but you want to remove all sawdust or the stain wont stick.

Step Six – Adding Stain

Now remember, stain is not like paint. You don’t paint it on and let it dry. You have to wipe it off with a
rag or it will be really sticky. So don’t stain something in direct sunlight or it’ll dry really fast before you
can wipe it off. Depending on the color you’re going for, If you want a dark color, leave the stain on the
table longer, but if you want a lighter color, add the stain, wait about 1-2 minutes and then wipe it off
with a rag. Depending on the color you’re going for will determine how long you want to keep the stain
on there. If you like, you can practice on some extra wood that you had when you cut the wood to see
which color you like. For me, I like the color after just about a minute or so before wiping it off.
I didn’t do the underside because nobody will ever see it, but you can if you want to.
Make sure you also do the edges and also the top monitor shelf.
Step Seven – Clear Coat
Now this one is more like paint and you just want to add your clear coat with a brush. Be sure to spread
it all out evenly because if clear coat starts to glob up in certain areas, it’ll start to look white. So spread
it out evenly over the entire desk and monitor shelf.

Step Eight – Assembly (Legs)

You have many different options with desk legs. If you have another desk that you want to put this on
top of, you can do that. You can buy table legs at Home Depot for $50 for a set of 4 of them. These
table legs will hold the weight of the desk just fine, we even tested it out. I have an electric standing
desk that I removed the legs from to add to this build, but before I did that, I went to Lowes and bought
4 black 30 Inch Steel pipes. I bought 4 pipes and 2 Flanges for each of the pipes. I love the look of these
because not only does it support the desk really well, but it looks really industrial and just fits so well
with the way the desk looks. First, I screwed in the end caps for the pipes on the bottom of the desk
with 1 ¼ inch wood screws, then all I had to do was screw in the legs. Instead of going for the typical
square leg setup, we decided to do it a little different to give myself some room while also giving lots of
support. I decided to have the back two flanges about a foot and a half inward and between the two
boards on the back because those were going to be holding up my monitor shelf. I didn’t want it to be
on only one board because that would put a lot of pressure on those boards with the monitor shelf, so I
made sure to put them between the two back boards. The two front legs I ended up having about 8
inch inward on the 2nd board. This gave my lots of leg room and also allowed the desk to have the
support it needed. I screwed the flanges into the desk, then all I had to do was screw the steel pipes
into the flanges on the desk.

Step Nine – Assembly (Monitor Shelf)

With the monitor shelf we pretty much did the exact same thing. I purchased four 1 ½ inch black steel
pipes with the eight flanges for the pipes as well. These were the exact same pipes I used for the legs,
just shorter ones to use for the monitor shelf. Of course, depending on how tall you want the shelf, you
can buy pipes at different sizes. With the shelf, screwing the flanges in was a very similar setup.
I placed the two back bases about 2 feet inward and the front two bases were only about 6 inches
inward. I wanted to have support on the end of the shelf, but I also wanted to have lots of space
underneath the shelf to store things. If I had both of the bases close to the center, it wouldn’t give
support to the edge and would also not give me any storage space.
I screwed the flanges into the monitor shelf and screwed the pipes into those flanges. Now The only
problem was, I also needed to screw the other flanges into the top of the desk but I didn’t have any
room at all because of the shelf. I found this incredible little tool at Lowes for about $15. It’s a DeWalt
right angle for your drill. You place it on your drill and it allows you to drill at a 90 degree angle. Using
that, I screwed in the monitor shelf to the top of the desk and there you go, a $4.000 editing desk for
$200.