Traci’s DIY Skirted Office Desk

Hello to all you Shanty Fans!

My name is Traci, and I blog at Beneath My Heart!

I am so thrilled to be guest posting for Whitney and Ashley today as they enjoy some much needed R & R.

I love the Shanty sisters, and I especially love the way they are not afraid to break out the power tools.

So in honor of their “go get ’em” attitudes, I thought I would show you how I made a new desk for my office (with the help of a few power tools, of course!)

If you follow my blog, (which I sure hope you do!), you know that we recently moved into a new home. The home is quite a bit smaller than our previous home.

So in order to make room for all my “stuff”, I have had to try and come up with some creative storage ideas.

One thing I decided to try was to build a skirted desk for my office. I thought the skirt would be the perfect place to hid some of my office “uglies”. (Paint, paperwork, printer, ribbons, bills, etc…)

I decided to make a desk, or you might want to call it a table, that was a long as the wall in that room.

I purchase three 2x10x8’s from Lowe’s and placed them on our saw horses…

Then I cut each board 82 inches long. (You could cut them as long or as short as you needed them.)

Then I cut 2×4’s to make a frame smaller than the top of the table.

I used PL adhesive caulk at the end of each 2×4 before I used my nail gun to nail them together.

I also used PL adhesive caulk on the frame before I nailed it to the top of the table…

I placed the three 2×10’s on top of my 2×4 frame and nailed them together.

Next, I cut some 2×4’s for the legs of the table and nailed them to the frame. It didn’t matter if my table had ugly legs because I knew I would be covering them with a skirt.

I made my table 30 inches high.

Then I used a clean cloth to wipe on the stain…

It is called Provencial from Minwax.

For the skirt, I cut strips from some drop cloths 31 inches long…

I LOVE drop cloths! I especially love that they are already hemmed on one side, so I didn’t even have to break out my sewing machine for this project!

Next, I stapled the drop cloth to a 1×2 board that was cut 82 inches long (the length of the front of the table.) I gathered the material every couple of inches to create my skirt.

Then I attached the skirt to the table by screwing the 1×2 into the table top. (I used 2 inch wood screws.)

Then the material lays nicely between the 1×2 and the table top!

I did the same thing to the sides of the table too!

I already LOVE my new desk. I stuffed a bunch of my “uglies” underneath, and the room still looks great!

Whew!

I grabbed some accessorites from around my house to decorate it for now. Of course, I may change it around a bit still.

But for now, I am really going to enjoy this roomy desk!

Thank you for letting me share this project with you!

Since we just moved into a new home, I am starting from “decorating scratch”. I would love for you to follow along as I transform each room of our home on a very tight budget. It should be fun!

Thank you, Whitney and Ashley, for letting me share my shanty today! 🙂