A friend of ours, who I’ve made a number of things for, recently asked if I would consider making a small desk for their 2 year old.
The requirements were simple:
- Dimensions of 80cm wide, 42 cm deep and 50cm high
- Material to be a light coloured timber to match other things I had made for her
- If possible to include a drawer
My first thought was – I don’t like drawers. I haven’t mastered dovetail joints and I never seem to get them to track quite right. Also, with the size of the desk, the drawer would have to be fairly small and shallow.
But I decided I could do it and drew up several options for the design. One design had ends made from a solid sheet, but with a cutout to make them a bit more open. The alternate design used round legs to give a far more open look. For both designs, I identified my materials and fittings and was able to give a quote of $100 for either of them – which gave me a small margin.
Our friend chose the round leg design.
For the main material I settled on Hevea (otherwise known as rubberwood) boards from Bunnings. These gave a nicely grained light colour. The drawback that I discovered was that they were laminated with no consideration of the the nap of the grain, so some pieces had been machined against the grain and were quite rough. Also the board was 40.5cm wide, so I marginally missed out on the depth measurement for the desk. Round pine legs with screw fittings were joined to angled brackets on the bottom of the desk. The drawer was fitted to runners to give a nice smooth action.
It all went together quite well and my drawer was made with just butt joints finishing up looking very neat on the installed drawer runners.
When I look at it, it seems to be a well proportioned desk, and looks just like simple student desks that you can buy – except it is small.
Taking out the cost of materials, There was only about $15 profit for me – but I do this for the fun and any profit just enables me to do more or buy more toys for the workshop.