Upcycle a Hardwood Floor into a Sturdy Desk

Furniture & Lighting Home Woodworking Workshop
Upcycle a Hardwood Floor into a Sturdy Desk

College student Micah needed a desk, which can be expensive. Fortunately, after replacing the floor in his house, he kept some of the old wood. Combining the reclaimed flooring with pallet wood for the frame and joinery pieces and old fence posts to make legs, he was able to make his new desk using recycled materials!

To help visualize what his finished desk would look like, and keep track of where to place the wood, he cleverly placed tape on the floor of his workspace. This allowed him to build up the desk frame to this shape. He then covered the frame with the recycled floorboards, which were placed on top at an angle.

Once the boards were glued into place, he trimmed off the excess with a router, then attached the legs. For proper cable management, he cut a hole offset from one of the legs, which was partially hollowed-out to conceal them. As seen in two of the latter photos in the gallery below, this helped contain an almost universally messy situation!

After setting up the desk (and replacing a leg that he tried to hand-cut a cavity into), he began an involved process of sanding and staining the desk until the surface was nice and shiny. The edges and legs were also stained and sanded, though he didn’t use quite as fine of a grit on the legs.

The end results are really excellent, and should serve Micah well as he completes his studies. As seen in the last gallery photo, he also build a small round table while waiting for the glue to dry on his main project. According to him it took about a month to gather all the wood, then a week to build it.

[via Reddit]

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Jeremy is an engineer with 10 years experience at his full-time profession, and has a BSME from Clemson University. Outside of work he’s an avid maker and experimenter, building anything that comes into his mind!

View more articles by Jeremy S Cook

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