It’s been forEVs since I talked about my office redo. It was last year, back in 2011 when we were all so young and naive. As a reminder, we’re trying to take this room:

And add a wall of built-in cabinetry (and eventually a custom desk) so it looks closer to this:

Using nothing but wood, and the brains and brawn of this guy, who seriously didn’t know what he was in for when he married me.

Speaking of young and naive…

Last time I showed it to you, Andy had built the boxes that will make up the cabinets on that wall:

That is the inside of someone else’s garage.

Since then, he also built the face frames that will go on the front of the cabinet boxes. I think they’re beautiful, and Andy is not-so-secretly proud of his handiwork. Rightfully so.

He attached them to the cabinet boxes and took them outside to prime them:

Then he brought them back inside and put them in place. Sorry for the craptastic lighting here.

We were at the point where we really needed to make a decision on what to use for our countertop surfaces. We’ll eventually be adding a custom desk to the center of the room, and wanted both counters to match, so we’re looking at between 30 and 40 square feet of surface to cover total. Because we’re on the teensiest of budgets, the cost of different options adds up pretty quickly.

Here are the options we considered:

1. DIY concrete

Via Imperfectly Polished

Pros: Interesting look, nice solid surface for writing.
Cons: A lot of work, and even if it comes to $10 per square foot, that’s still $300 or $400.

2. White corian

Via Sterling Surfaces

Pros: Love the fresh white look, high desk-writability factor (which is a real thing).
Cons: Over budget. Story of my life.

3. DIY stained planks

This is what YHL did in their office:

Via Young House Love

Pros: Within budget! Woohoo! We even considered using some of the leftover hardwoods from when we installed our floors. This option looked pretty promising until I looked back at my inspiration photos and remembered they’re all fresh and white, without the dark counters:

Source unknown

Via Cococozy
Cons: With a big desk in the middle of the room, I was worried that the end result would just look like a lot of dark wood… everywhere you look. Plus, our floorboards are slightly beveled on the edges, so if we recycled them for the countertop surface, it wouldn’t be a perfectly smooth surface like you’d want for a desk.

Which led us to the final option…

4. Painted white solid plywood surface.

In this case, we’d just use the same wood we’re using to build the bookshelves, painted white like the rest of it.

Pros: Cheapest, easiest option by far.
Cons: If we use latex paint, it can have a sticky effect even after it dries, which won’t work well for a desktop surface. It also may not last well long-term. We really liked this option though and wanted it to work, so we started looking into non-latex-paint finishes we could use to give it a lacquered feel.

We considered oil-based paint, then ruled it out because it can yellow over time. We also considered lacquer, but didn’t do it. We don’t have a good reason for that yet, so we may still go back to it. But for now, we’re thinking latex-based paint covered in a polyurethane finish. We hope that’ll make it hard, non-sticky and ultimately fabulous.

So there’s the elaborate decision-making process for something that most people won’t notice. What do you think? What would you have chosen?