My New Desk: Part 1

So, inspired by the internet and in response to my great need for a desk, I decided to go about making my own desk out of plumbing pipe and wood. After mulling it over for several months (I never said that I was quick with my decisions) I finally went out to Home Depot this past weekend and purchased about $90 worth of 1/2" black steel pipe. My goal was to create my own version of the desk seen on the photo to the right. (I no longer remember where I found this photo, I believe it might have been one of the apartment therapy blogs).

The first step was cleaning off the pipe once I brought it home. Home Depot has this annoying habit of labeling every single piece of pipe with a sticker, and then wrapping the whole thing with tape. The good news is that I discovered that baking soda is excellent for scrubbing off the tape/sticker residue left on the pipe! In about 40 minutes, I had all of it cleaned off and ready to go.

The next step was to begin assembling all the various pieces into legs and ultimately the frame for my desk. At left are all the pieces of pipe necessary for the desk. When you have them on the floor like that, they really don't look like all that much.

The actual process of screwing all the pipes and fittings together took quite a bit of work, as the metal creates a lot of friction against itself as you screw the pieces together. The important thing is to get good, tight connections so that the end frame is solid and doesn't wiggle around. I found that by using an occasional wrench and then using the pipes themselves as levers, I was able to get fairly solid connections. Just as a warning, I found that the fittings got quite hot as I wrestled them together, so be careful.

Now, in my perusing of the internets, I discovered other people who came across the problem of trying to screw together all the pieces of piping. The problem is that pipes all follow the same direction in their threading--turn to the right to tighten, to the left to loosen. This is fine, but as the assembled pieces begin to take shape, it means that you have to start rotating entire sections to make a connection. Not only does this become increasingly difficult, but finally, when you try to make the last connection--the point where all these pipe sections turn back and connect with themselves forming a loop--you will find that it is impossible to screw the last joint. As you try to screw it in on one side, it will begin unscrewing at the opposite end of the pipe.

Now some people have solved this problem by simply screwing in the second-to-last connection (the penultimate connection, if you will) extra tight so that as they screw in the last connection, the net results are two slightly loose connections. I was not happy with this solution, so I contemplated my inspirational picture for a long time. I eventually noticed an odd piece on it (you can see it on the very left edge of the picture), which I discovered is called a pipe union.

Pipe unions are wonderful things! They consist of three parts--two end pieces for the ends of two pipes where they are to meet and a very large nut that tightens over the two end pieces, locking them together. This means that you can take two large assembled sections of plumbing and then simply lock them together with a quick twist. You can see these magical devices in my parts picture--they are the two large pieces of metal at the top corner of the center paper towel.

I decided to make use of two of these unions so that I could easily attach the front of the frame to the back of the frame. This also allows for easy break down in case you ever need to move, or simply relocate the desk to another room. You need at least one union for this project, but two makes everything a lot easier.

Above is my completed frame! It is quite sturdy, and not as heavy as you might expect, considering that it is made from iron pipe. My next post will cover the creation of the surface of the desk.