81 Basement Progress: Studio Desk Part 3

The studio desk dream is becoming more of a reality, which has me glowing!

I have been so unorganized in my studio without a good workspace and storage.  It's driving me a little insane.  I have piles of papers on my desk, boxes and office supplies stacked on the dresser and I have been working off of a little laptop for weeks.  However, the end of the desk building process is in site and soon I will get to deck it out and make it my own!

As you may recall, I started out with a vision:

And we started the building process by attaching some wainscoting, assembling some bookcases and installing a floating shelf.

Parker and I got a case of the sickies, so the hubs took over the building process for awhile.  I told him to take pictures.  He took one.

We needed an actual "desk" for me to work on, and we brainstormed all sorts of ideas.  I wanted to try and be resourceful so we ended up using an old bi-fold door panel that we had {from when we swapped out our doors from oak to white paneled}.

The thing about the bi-fold door that made it so perfect is that it was a good depth, seemed stable and strong and we already had it on hand!

Bryan started out by "shimming" under the bookcases since they were leaning a bit forward.  Our floors aren't perfectly level and we wanted the bookcases to be nice and flush against the back wall.

Then he sanded down the top of the door, measured twice and cut the desk once.  To finish off the new rough edge, he framed the outer edges with a piece of thin trim {2" x 1/4"}:

What he didn't take a picture of was the underside, but I tried to get a snapshot of that later.  It has a small lip below the desk where the trim is a bit longer than the door.

He used the same trim pieces to screw into the sides of the bookcases and the back wall:

See how the pieces of wood create a bit of a "notch".  This is where the desk top will slide in and sit.  The line that he drew is where I wanted the top of the desk to land.

At this point, we had a desk!

It's VERY sturdy.  The husband made sure to put a lot of weight on it to test it out before we put our pricey computer on top.  It wouldn't be good to see that crash to the floor.  

He also made sure the bookcases were affixed to the wall, which will also protect the desk from moving or separating at all.

The very top of the desk unit is just a piece of white melamine we found at Home Depot.  We cut it to the right length and screwed it down from the top into the bookcases:

Then, Bryan got to work adding some decorative primed white crown molding with an air nailer:

Once the nail holes were all caulked, I was ready to paint.  I had some leftover paint from our "Billy Bookcase Built-Ins", which is all the same IKEA white, so I used that on the crown molding and front of the desk, so it would match the two side bookcases and floating shelf.

This is where you will have to use your imagination and try to see where my crazy brain is going with this...

I only painted the front edges and some of the top of the desk...

My plan is to use the top as a place to bring in some color.  I had a piece of plexi-glass cut down to the same size as the desk top, so I am hoping that I can just stick a piece of decorative paper or fabric or paint swatches or calendars or kid's artwork or whatever I would like at the moment, under the piece of plexi!  That way, the desk top can be decorative and versatile and I can switch it out as I please.  That's the plan anyway!

The final steps will be to drill a hole in the top of the desk for the computer cord to run and another into the side of the bookcase for my scanner.  And finish trimming out the studio.  Then, I get to "move in" and add the finishing touches.  I eventually want to add drawers and doors to the side shelves, but they come at a cost, so I have to determine how many I really want need based on my office/crafting supplies.

So can you see it yet?  What major projects have you been working on lately, that are leaving you grinning ear to ear?