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hey folks!
I recently moved into a large semi-detached 3 bed house with my gf and decided to convert one of the bedrooms (3.1m x 4m afair) into a man-cave/office room since I'll be working from home more often soon... I'm on a tight budget since I purged my savings buying the home, so am DIYing everything. I started a shopping list last night and there's one thing I'm struggling with: the desk's "worktop"... I want a 2.5m - 3m desk, preferably solid wood "looking" (lol).
a few years back I wouldn't have looked at laminate for an expensive looking desk, but after buying laminate flooring for most of my home, I've realised that cheap laminate is pretty real & expensive looking compared to back in the 1mm Turkish printed designs.
I've also read about veneered timber (engineered wood) but it's all confusing to me, since I'm only a son of a carpenter.
I guess the main thing, though, is that I don't want to pay over £150 for a 3m desk "top"... every penny extra I spend on the desk will be money I can't spend on the chair (looking to upgrade my old ikea markus from 10 years ago, OC forums old favourite), HD (or 4k if I can go ultra cheap) projector and sofa bed.
I see that many places, from eBay to Ikea & B&Q do "solid wood" for around £150/3m, but is it crap/what are the cons? I'd really love to know the recommended vendors for worktops... a lot of that info is outdated, I saw on OC forums from 2015 that there was £90 38mm solid oak from wickes... not anymore!
another thing, 2.8mm thickness for a laminate (ikea ekbacken) or solid wood (B&Q) worktop isn't a good idea when it'll have at least one of my three 32" monitors, an ultrasonic cleaner, mini-pc, DIY vape stuff and all sorts of other crap on it, right? I'm going to build either a wood or black iron pipe underframe for the worktop to give it enough support to prevent sagging, so maybe it doesn't matter as much? Idk
sorry for rambling, modafinil will do that to ya. have a great day everyone, thanks for everything
I recently moved into a large semi-detached 3 bed house with my gf and decided to convert one of the bedrooms (3.1m x 4m afair) into a man-cave/office room since I'll be working from home more often soon... I'm on a tight budget since I purged my savings buying the home, so am DIYing everything. I started a shopping list last night and there's one thing I'm struggling with: the desk's "worktop"... I want a 2.5m - 3m desk, preferably solid wood "looking" (lol).
a few years back I wouldn't have looked at laminate for an expensive looking desk, but after buying laminate flooring for most of my home, I've realised that cheap laminate is pretty real & expensive looking compared to back in the 1mm Turkish printed designs.
I've also read about veneered timber (engineered wood) but it's all confusing to me, since I'm only a son of a carpenter.
I guess the main thing, though, is that I don't want to pay over £150 for a 3m desk "top"... every penny extra I spend on the desk will be money I can't spend on the chair (looking to upgrade my old ikea markus from 10 years ago, OC forums old favourite), HD (or 4k if I can go ultra cheap) projector and sofa bed.
I see that many places, from eBay to Ikea & B&Q do "solid wood" for around £150/3m, but is it crap/what are the cons? I'd really love to know the recommended vendors for worktops... a lot of that info is outdated, I saw on OC forums from 2015 that there was £90 38mm solid oak from wickes... not anymore!
another thing, 2.8mm thickness for a laminate (ikea ekbacken) or solid wood (B&Q) worktop isn't a good idea when it'll have at least one of my three 32" monitors, an ultrasonic cleaner, mini-pc, DIY vape stuff and all sorts of other crap on it, right? I'm going to build either a wood or black iron pipe underframe for the worktop to give it enough support to prevent sagging, so maybe it doesn't matter as much? Idk
sorry for rambling, modafinil will do that to ya. have a great day everyone, thanks for everything