Building an Office in a Closet

I recently completed a project, I feel really good about it. I wanted to share it with you, give you some of the highlights, give you information on how you can access the plans for this and the diagrams if you wanna give it a try in your own shop. I call the project, The Office in a Closet. The reason for that is I was in search of office space inside of our home and we really didn't have any additional space that could be designated for that purpose. So what I did was took advantage of a small closet opening that had been framed off of the family room in our home and built my office into that. And that presented some obvious challenges given that it's only six feet by four feet, so a 24 foot square foot opening One of the things that I did to take advantage of that small space was to build the bookcases back into the wall as you can see. This gives me, book storage, magazine storage, et cetera without impacting any of the limited square footage of this office. The next thing that I did was, I designed it in such a way that the base cabinets have a good gap between them. So that gives me good leg room. It doesn't feel constraining like most office furniture that I would buy from a store would feel. The next thing that I did was and this may be probably the most important aspect to maximize the space utilization. And that was to build the desktop into the full six foot wide span of the office opening. So, while a six foot wide office is really nothing to brag about, a six foot wide desk actually feels pretty luxurious. And the fourth and final area that I designed to take advantage of this limited space was to build the cabinets with an electrical outlet underneath each one of them. So now I can have things like printers, external hard drives, power supplies, chargers, all the things that normally sit up on top create a nest of cables and drive me crazy. I've got tucked out of the way and they don't get in my way. And then to accommodate the access to the wires, I simply installed a grommet on each side of the desk that I can pull the cables that I need at the time through the top and have access to just what I need. From a woodworking perspective, there are some interesting aspects of this project. I'll show you how to make drawers with locking rabbet joints and false fronts. I think that's a easy and solid way to build drawers. I'll show you how to build frame and panel doors and these are solid wood panel doors which I really like the feel of that rather than a quarter inch plywood insert gives it a more solid feel and I just like the way it looks as well, good grain matching. The way that I did the top was to add an edge band that gives it a thicker heftier appearance and it also gives it good support across that wide span. And then finally at installation time, I'll show you how to scribe the top to the wall so that it matches the contour exactly. It gives you a nice custom fit and a good look that was really professionally built in. So there you have it. There's my office in a closet project. All the plans are available at Woodworkers Guild of America website and you can also ask questions on the forum along the way in case you run into difficulties. Myself or the other editors or members of the Guild we'll be glad to answer your question and help you get a good successful build and installation of your Office in a Closet project. Thanks for watching and good luck with this project.