DIY Plywood Worktop for Shared Home Office

If you’re wondering how we made the custom plywood worktop desk in our office, below are the steps Ian used to build it! Make sure to check out our YouTube video of this project if you haven’t already. This post contains affiliate links, which may lead to a small commission if purchased. This comes at no extra cost to you. Thanks!

DIY Plywood Worktop

One of the most difficult parts of owning a home is finding the right furniture to make the most out of every space. When purchasing furniture, one often has to choose between style and functionality. Learning to make our own furniture is how we get around this dilemma. Our office is a sort of an octagonal shape that would normally be hard to furnish. However we built a plywood worktop desk with the look we wanted that also made the most efficient use of the space. This semi-floating plywood worktop is an inexpensive alternative to that anyone can build.

Plywood Worktop Tools We Used

Additional Materials

Birch Plywood ¾” x 4’ x 8’ sheet
MDF ¾” x 4’ x 8’ sheet
23 gauge pin nails
Wood Glue
2” construction screws
3” construction screws
Minwax water based poly, matte or satin finish

Plywood Worktop Steps I Took

Measure the dimensions for the top
Make cuts for plywood worktop
Cut & add biscuits
Cut strips for lamination
Use template to cut bottom piece of MDF using the router
Cut back piece of plywood for French cleat
Glue front & top pieces of plywood (using biscuits)
Glue middle pieces of MDF and secure with 23 gauge pin nails
Adhere bottom piece of MDF with glue and nails
Glue & screw back pieces for French cleat
Cut 1/4″x1/4″ rabbit around front corners of desk
Glue 3/8″x3/8″ piece of hard wood
Trim down with block plane and flush trim router bit
Round over edge of hardwood with round over bit
Poly & Install plywood worktop

Plywood Worktop Design

This shared-office plywood worktop will be the desk that Kathleen and I both use for our day-jobs. It had to have a lot of surface area for our computers. It will also be where we plan future blog posts, edit YouTube videos, and design other projects. The original inspiration for this project was a plywood worktop that had a 2×4 skeleton and a plywood shell that was screwed to the studs. While I’m sure it would be sturdy for a little while, the desk creates leverage and eventually those screws will either pull out of the studs or the desk itself. That’s why I like this semi-floating design a lot better.

We chose to make this plywood worktop thinner than a 2×4 constructed desk as well. This is a small room and the desk mentioned above would have been 5” thick! It would have made this room feel even smaller and cramped. Even though this desk takes up a lot of space it doesn’t feel intrusive and I attribute this to the thickness of the top.

Mounting Technique

Attaching a piece of plywood to a wall perpendicularly isn’t the easiest thing to accomplish. What I chose for the method of attaching this plywood worktop to the wall is a French cleat. I use this in the shop for securing my tools to the wall and it works extremely well. The benefit of using this system is that the mitered edges help to pull the desk tight to the wall without relying on a screw to do the pulling for you.

Using MDF for the middle and bottom layers added quite a bit of weight to the desk. This was a tradeoff for the cost and time savings we gained from using Birch plywood and MDF over traditional hardwoods from a mill. The plywood worktop desk took me about one week to build in my spare time. If I had to mill the lumber and glue up a top, it would have added a week to the process.

Cutting the Plywood

Cutting the Birch plywood for this plywood worktop is the hardest part of this entire build. I measured the area the desk was supposed to fit in at least five times. Since the room is partially octagonal in shape, the three walls that this desk was going to cover had some weird angles to work with. I used this digital angle finder to measure and angles then transferred the measurement to the plywood.

Using my track saw I carefully cut out the tops of the desk sections. (A circular saw would have worked fine, too.)

I cut the bottom piece of MDF slightly larger than the top. Measuring doesn’t have to be precise here.

Making the Smooth Seam

Painters’ tape adhered the bottom piece of MDF to the top piece of plywood. I used the flush trim bit on my router to cut the rest of the bottom piece to match to top. Then, I cut a strip off the long edge twice the thickness of the plywood. This allowed room for the mitered front piece of plywood and the piece in the back that has the French cleat.

The middle layer of this plywood worktop is also MDF, but to reduce the overall weight of the desk, I cut strips instead of using another solid piece. We chose to make these about 3” wide and left about 6” in between each.

I cut long strips for the front face and the French cleat parts. I chose to make the front edge a little wider than necessary so I could come back with the router and trim it down once it was assembled. The width of the piece in the back for the French cleat was cut so that the mitered edge would stick out past the bottom of the plywood worktop.

Assembling the Plywood Worktop

With all the pieces cut I could begin assembling each section of this plywood worktop. I started by cutting biscuits into the mitered edges of the front of each desk section. Before moving on, I tested the fit of each and then applied a thick layer of glue to both sides of the miter.

I checked that the corners were square then started adding in the middle layer pieces of MDF. Each piece of MDF was lathered in glue, placed, and nailed in place with a few 23-gauge pin nails. Then, I applied glue to each exposed face of these strips and laid the bottom piece of MDF on top, again, securing it in place with pin nails.

Next, I turned the piece around and applied a layer of glue to the back strip of plywood with the French cleat. The piece was secured with a few 2” screws to make sure it never came off. Finally, I placed heavy objects on the plywood worktop and let the glue dry for 24 hours.

Strengthening the Corners

Mitered plywood corners are susceptible to damage especially desk corners on this plywood worktop. I like to add a hardwood corner to prevent this when possible. So, I switched the flush trim bit out for a ¼” rabbiting bit and set the depth to ¼”. I ran the router over each mitered corner which left a ¼” x ¼” rabbit.

Luckily, I had some soft maple from our dining table that was similar in tone and grain pattern. I cut long strips to fill the rabbits, but I made each dimension slightly larger than the rabbit. Next, I applied a layer of glue to the corner and affixed the soft maple corner piece with painters’ tape.

Once dry, I used my block plane to trim the top edge of the corner until flush with the plywood worktop. I also used the router with a flush trim bit to then cut the front edge. The last step was to break the hard edge with a round over bit in the router.

Plywood Worktop Legs

Table legs are available in all shapes and sizes from numerous websites. I wanted to try making legs myself for this plywood worktop and learn a new skill. The design of these legs is a simple taper on all four sides with an adjustable foot on the bottom so I could make sure the plywood worktop was level once installed.

I had some scrap 2×4’s laying around, so I glued them together to make a 4×4 that I could mill down to final dimension. Theoretically, I could buy 4×4’s from a big box store to save some time. After the milling process, I had four pieces of stock that measured 30” x 2 – 3/16” x 2 – 3/16”. I made a jig for the table saw out of MDF to cut the taper I wanted. Next, I ran two sides of the leg stock through the table saw then used one of the offcuts to line up the marks on the other two sides with the table saw blade.

I marked center on both ends of each leg and drilled a hole for the feet and the hanger bolt that would be used to secure the legs to the plywood worktop.

Before painting, I rounded over the edges with the router and sanded each side to 150 grit. We painted these legs white to help with the floating look. It blends in pretty well with the wall.

Plywood Worktop Construction in Summary

This plywood worktop project was super easy to do. I used a lot of tools, but most of the tools listed above can be substituted with inexpensive alternatives. You don’t need to buy an expensive, cheaply built desk that doesn’t make the most efficient use of the space. Learning to make furniture like this will make your home more unique and better suited for your needs.