How to Estimate the Amount of Materials Needed for a Custom Oak Computer Desk

Part of the Video Series How to Build a Custom Computer Desk

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Learn how to estimate the amount of materials you will need for your custom oak computer desk project in this free DIY video.

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How to Estimate the Amount of Materials Needed for a Custom Oak Computer Desk
Hi this is Jon on behalf of Expert Village, in this video clip I will be talking about estimating materials. As we take a look at our desk that we drew up I'm going to make the top out of a big sheet of plywood, in addition I'm going to have legs right here on each edge, I'm also going to have a leg along the back side. Between each leg I'm going to have a skirt board which is just a short board. Now the height of my desk is going to be 30 inches that should allow me to have a slide out drawer with a keyboard and still be able to get under it with my chair. Knowing that my sheet of plywood is four feet wide by eight feet long I use a computer program to draw this up. Now you could use a sheet of graph paper and have each sheet equal one inch that would be very similar to what I'm doing here. What I did is I sketched out where each piece is going to lie on my sheet of plywood. Here I have that I'm going to cut out on my corner that way I know that this edge and this edge would be a perfect 90 degree from each other. I have my skirt boards here that are going to going to go in between my three legs the one on the back, the right leg and the left leg. For this project I'm going to build as much as I can out of this plywood veneer and then I'm just going to put a little trim piece of solid oak on the front of it to cover up the edge that way my entire thing would look like real wood. As you could see I have drawn my sheet of plywood and I put each component into that sheet of plywood so I know that I'm going to have to buy one full sheet of plywood and all I would need is a board that is going to serve as all my trim work. I have estimated that I will need a board that is 10 feet long by a little over 7 inches. If I run out of lumber while I'm building it I could always go out and buy another board.

About the Expert

Expert: Jon Olson has worked in Residential Construction for multiple years, holds a bachelor of science degree, and currently teaches wood working at the high school level. Read More