Update : Desk Reconstruction

So My idea for my desk reconstruction is to turn one big desk into a set of nested desks. This would create some extra room and make the  keyboard and mouse position lower and much more comfortable.

I removed the table legs from the desk and measured how deep I wanted it. I'm going to cut it down from 28 inches to 15.  I think two desks that are 15" deep should be fine for me.

So I got a board from Ikea that I think will do well for my lower desktop. I measured it against the current desk and realized it was far too wide, butting up against the legs of the larger table.  If it was to nest under the main table, i would either need to somehow make the main table wider, or the smaller table narrower. In this case I did a little of both.

After removing the veneer on the back and sides of the smaller table's edges, sawing it to size wasn't much of a problem, though as it was really my first go with my new reciprocating saw and I was alone, holding the board with one hand and guiding the saw with the other left some sloppy results with the cut. I later went back and cleaned it up, but it took considerably longer than had I simply waited for Jenn or rich to come home and help hold it down. Sometimes my impatience has a price to pay.

The larger table was a big problem. I should have realized that a wooden object as big as it was should have been much heavier. This third picture is what I found when I cut the back off. 90% of the table is hollow, filled with honeycomb cardboard. This created 2 problems;

1. The places where the legs attach are solid(ish) plywood blocks, and the cut removed the back two. Without them, the back legs have nothing to anchor to.

2. The back edge has no plywood to attach the veneer back onto. Without it you can simply see the cardboard. Additionally, since I removed the plywood edge from the back, what is now the back edge is very flimsy. I don't think it will hold up the weight of my work iMacs.


So here's the plan I came up with; I need the leg blocks, and I need the back spline, but I don't need the top or bottom layers of plywood. If I can manage to remove those I can insert the wood back into the rear edge of the table and all will be right with the world.

So here's the rear section with all the non-essential crap removed. You can see the two leg blocks and the rear spline. I needed at this point to remove the top and bottom layers of plywood, which I quickly found out were wood-glued to the assembly, making them nearly impossible to separate.

Here you can see I managed to chisel off the plywood from the rear spline and saw away the side splines. all that wss left was the plywood above and below the leg blocks. This was the single most difficult thing in the project. After about 6 hours of chipping, chiseling (with a paint scraper, mind you. I don't have a chisel) bleeding, cursing and flailing about in a chubby hulk rage. I managed to remove the plywood. The last and most effective 2 hours were spent "whittling" the wood away with a boxcutter. seriously, I needed to bust out some whitt'lin skills on this'n.

I dont have any pics of the aftermath, sorry. once I inserted the leg blocks and spline into the back of the table, It really just looked like the edge of a table without a veneer.

With a little Gorilla glue I reattached the original veneer strips to the back and sides of both tables. Now they pretty much look like smaller versions of themselves. Yay me.


Next: Painting!