DIY AESTHETIC DESK cute plywood desk

Oh, hello! I'm Angelica, and this is how I made a DIY desk using only beginner woodworking tools that is affordable, easy, and most importantly, hot. Oh, it's cute. Trust me. Okay, let's go. I work from home as a UX designer, conducting user research, creating prototypes for web apps, and writing code to implement those apps. I wanted to build myself a work desk, an aesthetic desk, and besides, I just got new protective goggles that no longer accentuate my unibrow. Are you ready? Let's hit it. For this project, I'm using birch plywood, which is incredibly sturdy, and it's clad in real birch veneer, so it looks beautiful without the price. The only giveaway is its layered edges, and I'll show you an amazing hack to cover those later on. I ended up using a total of four plywood sheets, each two by four feet and three quarters inch thick. Taking one of the plywood sheets, I marked out an oval shape for the desktop. The oval shape will give a more modern look, like something from CB2 or Emily Henderson or Studio McGee. Then I used a jigsaw to cut out the shape. To avoid splintering the wood, make sure to use a t-shank blade with a TPI of 20 or higher. Then I repeated the process on the other end of the wood. Ta-freakin-da, an oval. Using a low grit sandpaper, I used 60, I did some sanding to smooth out the edges of the oval desktop, then I sanded the face with 220 grit sandpaper. I like to draw a line with pencil, and then when the pencil marks are gone, I know I've evenly sanded the entire area. Try to sand in the direction of the grain of the wood. Easy. Now for the legs. I wanted to make two thick slab legs for the desk. You can use any saw for these straight cuts, but I used a jigsaw just to keep the tools to a minimum. Using a sheet of plywood for each leg, I cut mine at 17 inches wide by 29 inches tall, because that's the desk height that is most comfortable to me at 5'2", but whatever height is most comfortable to you, you know, do that. There are lots of ways we could attach these legs, but one of the easiest is using pocket holes. This pocket hole kit comes with instructions and everything you need to measure and drill pocket holes, including the screws themselves. It's a super easy and satisfying process. I drilled four pocket holes on each leg where the leg would attach to the desktop. While drilling holes in the second leg, I totally goofed and failed to securely tighten one of my clamps, so I scuffed the wood a little. Whoops. Okay, so I made a mistake. I'm sorry. I should have secured the clamp. I know that now. I'm sorry, okay? Am I gonna throw this deathquake? Nah. Perfection is the enemy. Don't let it keep you from trying something new. I marked out where I wanted to place the legs, about eight inches from the desk ends, and used some heavy paint cans to balance the legs while I secured them in place. While I was not able to focus the camera on this wood glue, I did use it on the legs before screwing them in place. I used screws that were one and a quarter inch long, which came included in the pocket hole kit. Then I repeated the process for the other leg. One of the legs was not perfectly parallel. A little hack to fix this. Just take a piece of scrap wood and screw it to both legs until they are pulled parallel to each other. Use a speed square to make sure you're getting that right angle. Oh yes. And just let the glue and the legs dry overnight. And in the morning, I returned to two perfectly straight desk legs. I removed the scrap wood and this is where we're at. I added a support board between the back of the legs. This will help to stabilize the legs and will act as the back of our drawer later on. I attached it using pocket holes across the board and on both ends where the legs connect. It's drawer time. Okay, drawers can be kind of difficult to make, but I came up with an easy drawer hack that I think is pretty dang great. I found these sliders online that are intended to slide out a keyboard from beneath your desk. This is going to be the base for our drawer. I cut out and attached a piece of wood to be the base of the drawer. Is this on? I don't know. So this is a drawer and it's going to slide out like this and this part attaches to the inside top of the desk. But it only drops down like two inches and that's a really shallow drawer, obviously. I'm so it's just going to have a little more drop to it. We're looking for drop, max drop. Does that make sense? Then I simply attached the whole structure to the underside of the desktop and flipped that baby over. Let me tell you, these slides have such a satisfying feel. It's like a deep slide. To finish off this drawer, we just need to add a drawer front. I flipped the desk back over and applied some wood glue to a board. I propped it up on some little pieces of scrap wood while the glue dried just to make sure that it would open and close without any friction. I secured with clamps and let it dry. Oh my god, a moment of truth. Yes, yes, that is smooth. That is smooth! And there we go, a simple drawer that anyone can build. The only thing left to do is cover the plywood edges. For this, we're going to use a gift from the gods known as edge banding. Edge banding is real wood veneer. In this case, it's a birch veneer that will perfectly match the rest of the desk wood and it has an adhesive on the back side. So all you do is line it up with the plywood edge. Make sure there's overhang on top and bottom. We'll trim that later. Then use an iron to melt the adhesive. While the adhesive cools and dries, roll a wood block over the banding to help it adhere. And as long as you don't burn yourself, this process is so satisfying. Okay, so my edge banding has all dried. The adhesive is dried. Now we just have to trim off some of the excess. Let me show y'all. I used an exacto blade to trim the excess overhang on top and bottom. Then just take a piece of sandpaper wrapped around a block or something and sand in only one direction so that you're rather blending the banding edges around the plywood. It should look pretty seamless in the end. If you want to, you can also put a block or something behind the banding while you trim it. Just don't cut yourself. Yeah, don't do that. Okay, so one more thing. Oh, that's too much zoom. Okay. I want to show you I accidentally drilled through the desk. Whoops, I made a mistake. We're just going to cover that really easily with some wood filler. Get it, get it, get it, get it. So this matches the birch color of the wood. You're not even be able to tell there's a hole there. Look at this. If you goof up like me, don't panic. Breathe. Just sand the hole, overfill with wood filler, let it dry, and then sand smooth. No one will ever know your secret. That's the hole. Very exciting day. We're going to test out some stains. I have a pistachio on my tooth. Do you guys know about pistachios? All stains will look different on different types of wood. So I want to test it out on a piece of scrap wood first. Okay, here we go. I've been burned before by failing to test my wood stains. I tested each of these with and without wood conditioner. When applying finishes, make sure your work area is free of sawdust and apply each coat with a clean rag or bristle brush. Ultimately, I decided to apply one, a wood conditioner, two, a teak oil, and three, a weathered oak stain that would prevent the color from looking yellow or orangey. I added little felt pads to the bottom of the desk for smoothfulness. For final touches, I added some of my favorite desk accessories, a classic schoolhouse lamp to counterbalance the modern vibe of the desk, a delightfully sleek pink mouse that doesn't make noise when you click it, a retro clock for no purpose really, a water bottle for my health, a plant for my joys. My boyfriend Ricky knows my love of notebooks and gave me this beautiful German one. Then a desk chair. It actually came in a set of two with a dark gray seat that felt very doctor's office-y to me, so I recovered the seat in two minutes with an old linen dress and a staple gun. I'll show you how I do it on the second chair. I do this a lot. It's my favorite way to wear dresses and the cream colored seat just looks prettier and contrasts so nicely with the darker wood. I'm ridiculously excited working at this DIY modern oval desk with drawers. If this video brought you a little bit of joy, consider hitting the like button for the video, subscribe to the channel, leave a sweet little comment or a nasty one. I mean, it's always fun. It came out to a total of $170 maybe for the build. Some of the finishes and extra things I did brought it to $196 or something. I love this desk. I am feeling kind of proud of myself and the thing is, if you take your time, anyone can do it. It's really not that hard. You just have to be patient. Patience is hard for me. I'm quite manic most of the time. Thank you guys for watching. That's it. That's all I got. Okay.