Turning Old Attic Boards Into A Modern LED Desk

My parents' attic had floorboards nobody was using (oak, I think), so I turned them into a desktop. I glued them up, sanded them flat-ish, cut them to 120 cm by 60 cm, finished them with Rubio Monocoat, and set aluminum LED tracks into routed channels along the edges. It sits on a cheap sit-stand desk frame, with a cable net underneath, a monitor arm, a plastic bonsai and a couple of Yu-Gi-Oh card boxes on top.

My mom's joke

We spend summers in France with my parents, and I still need somewhere to work, so I ordered a sit-stand desk. Its two-piece desktop nearly broke my toe during assembly. Then my mom came to look at it and said, joking, "I hope you're going to put LEDs." For context, she's not an LED fan. She gave my wife's quiche more praise on one video call than my LED door got in a whole month in France.

She was joking, but I took it as a challenge. Wood isn't cheap and I'd just lived through the coffee table budget, so my dad pointed me at the attic floor.

The boards

They were rough and twisted (one was so twisted I swapped it for another board from the attic), full of rusty nails, and hard enough that my little cordless circular saw gave up halfway through a cut. I planed the edges with a hand plane from my late grandfather's workshop and glued them up with clamps that were too short. The desktop came out rustic at best. My dad didn't look impressed. The boards had only really glued in the middle, so out came the LED door's main ingredient: wood filler.

Then the flattening. My dad's belt sander didn't work. I tried hand planes, a drill with a sanding disc, an orbital sander, an electric hand planer. We eventually got one side kind of flat, and I dreaded the other. One board also has dark black streaks running all the way through it. Rot, burn, curse, no idea. Sanding doesn't touch it, so now it lives under a monitor stand and a bonsai.

Victor's garage

Then my cousin Victor saved me. One evening at his place, I spotted a working belt sander and a router in his garage. The belt sander made short work of the second side. The router meant I could cut channels for aluminum LED tracks instead of sticking strips underneath, which, if you saw the coffee table, doesn't end well. Each channel took two passes, three for the first one I cut too small. One clamp slipped and left a design feature, but compared to the LED door that's three fewer mistakes.

Oak, glue and LED tracks

Woodworking: reclaimed boards, glue-ups without the right clamps, flattening with whatever's available, and this time I let the Rubio cure 48 hours before touching it. LEDs: routing for tracks, screwing the aluminum in so it stays removable, and the fact that aluminum edges are sharp. I bled a little. Blood for the Blood God.

The reveal

It went about how you'd expect. My mom's very first words were "Cute bonsai." Then she said she liked the desk, and my dad was genuinely impressed.

Watch it

Watch the full build on YouTube.

Gear and links

Products I used (Amazon affiliate links):

• Superstar Bonsai Tree
• Mouse mat
• ErGear sit-stand desk
• LED strip
• Aluminum tracks
• Cable management net
• Monitor Arm
• Yu-Gi-Oh Cards (Legendary Collection)
• Yu-Gi-Oh Cards (Legendary Decks 2)