DIY Office Desk from Affordable Recycled Door and Cabinets

This DIY door desk from salvaged kitchen upper cabinets and a simple door was super easy to create. It's an affordable way to increase storage and your working surface.

For my birthday, I asked my husband to take me to Construction Junction to pick out some recycled materials to make a new cheap DIY desk.

I was using a standard banquet table for my work desk. As you can see there is absolutely no storage and the entire room was beginning to become a huge problem.

Shopping at a Salvage Warehouse

Construction Junction is a 30,000 square foot warehouse located on the east end of Pittsburgh and is filled with donated, reclaimed, surplus building materials and used household goods.

We were amazed at what we saw there. The first area we walked through was filled with kitchen cabinets.

If you don't have access to a warehouse like this try looking at larger thrift stores or even something like your local Facebook marketplace.

There were old windows, gallons of paint, carpet squares and remnants, old toilets and tubs, and even some industrial decking.

Originally I thought I might use a countertop for the desktop. However, there were so many doors to choose from. Most were solid wood, not hollow-core doors. And, they were just about the perfect length and width.

We already used an old door as a headboard for our bed and it is one of my favorite thrift store upcycles.

I ended up buying four upper cabinets at $10 each, one pretty light green solid wood door for $5, a framed pegboard for $10 which I used for my gardening tools, and a large metal shelving unit for $25.

We also spent another $10 on lumber and some hardware to make a frame for the base. So for less than $100 I now have plenty of storage and a nice large area to work. Plus I have a couple of other great organization pieces too.

DIY Door Desk from Recycled Materials

We took the fronts off all the cabinets and the back off of two of the cabinets. Then we butted them up together to give a nice deep base. They already had a shelf in each cabinet for organizing and storing all my office supplies. I didn't think I needed any drawers but the separate shelf space was helpful.

My husband then made a frame from 2 x 4s to raise the height and screwed on brackets to attach the door.

As you can see from the pic above, the empty doorknob hole makes a great place to thread all my electrical wires.

I didn't even bother to paint the desk top as I kind of like the worn chippy look and the green color.

I'm so happy with my beautiful desk. I have more than enough room to work and plenty of storage on both sides. Maybe it's just me but the fact that it was recycled and inexpensive makes me love it even more.