DIY Two Person Desk

Our DIY 2 person desk was definitely a work in progress. In fact, Andy kept telling me he didn’t need a desk! He would just work at the dining room table that sits directly behind the desk. He doesn’t work from home full time, but he does do emails in the evenings or will stay home for the occasional morning. The problem with the dining room table was there is no good place to charge the laptop. This means the laptop charger lived next to the bed. Which means his laptop was always in bed! Not cool. We needed some work/ sleep separation in Casa de Dorobek.

Once I found this 78 inch long Ikea LINNMON desk that perfectly fit between the wall and the kitchen door, I was sold. We were getting a 2 person desk whether he used it or not. I mean I could put my sewing machine or Cricut there if Andy wasn’t feeling it! In my opinion, the more desk the better! (And what do you know, he loves his new space!)

To really appreciate the after, you’ve got to see the before. The black 3 drawer thing was not always there, it was the first peice we bought for the shared desk. But, that picnic basket did live on the floor to hold random office supplies and printer paper. Lovely, right? There was just no room for anything. I had not one single drawer or shelf. No bueno. Don’t mind the kid toys strewn about. Don’t worry, I still love my giant black and white pictures, and they just got moved to a different wall.

So, the giant pictures got moved to this wall with plans to add the 4th one plus two more when baby girl arrives!

A little more background on the whole desk debacle… before doing anything drastic or buying more furniture I always like to use my space to really determine what I want and need. It has almost been 3 years, and I was officially ready for a desk with more storage in the living room!

When we first moved in, I had a different desk in that spot, and after Maxwell came along I decided to move it to our other living room farther away from his room. This was also before we painted our walls and we had just installed the pocket door between the 2 living rooms!

You can see our living room when I moved the desk out and put the pie safe in its spot.

All of that to say, I like having the desk in our main living room best. So, we were back to the situation you see below. I knew I wanted more of my most used craft supplies handy. I have a giant craft closet in the hallway right next to Max’s bedroom. The problem was whenever I needed a glue stick/Sharpie/washi tape/paint brush/colored pencil I had to go swing open the squeaky craft cabinet doors and hunt for the item and pray that the craft tornado did not attack me. I needed these items handy, and my craft closet less cluttered.

It would have been ideal to have storage on either side and in the middle. But, our little office nook isn’t long enough, so we opted for one set of drawers in the middle. Now, you can get a 5 drawer IKEA ALEX, but I had a gift card to World Market and this black 3 drawer one was well, free! And looked fairly similar, so I went with that. This proved to be slightly annoying after we got everything home because the World Market Black 3 drawer Colton was too tall for the IKEA legs. Boo. Lucky me, Andy is handy and sawed off 1 inch of each leg! Good times. Honestly, if I was going to go with a single desk, I likely would have bought this one from World Market, but the top only comes in 59 inches long. (But those are the drawers I used!) Anywho…

Just so you know, the IKEA LINNMON 59 inch long desk top comes in 5 colors and costs $19.99: high gloss white, black, birch effect, high gloss red, and gray. The 78 inch version costs $45, the one we have, and only comes in black and white. Took me awhile to get that all straight, so thought I would share. Putting the desk together was easy peasy. Well, minus the whole sawing of the drawer legs debacle, but please don’t do that to yourself just buy the IKEA ALEX, for the love. Oh and here’s a glorious 2 person IKEA desk with ridiculously awesome amounts of storage, and fun faux painted brass fronts. One day, friends, one day!

For now, we are loving our desk for 2 with 3 drawers and tons of pretty, organized, and most importantly, handy craft supplies. I had most of the vases on hand, but did buy a few more from The Dollar Tree. The crayons and kid paint are in plastic vases so that Maxwell can carry them around when needed!

I’m working on a tutorial for how to hang the 2 different computer screens on the wall. That was Andy’s idea, and I love it. Gives you a few extra inches of desk space and keeps the desk looking tidy! What dod you think? Much better, right?!

UPDATE: Here is the post about how to hang a wall mounted pc and a wall mounted mac.