[dagw]

The cheapest desktop at Ikea costs $6[1], and that's pre-laminated and everything. I've bought stuff at Ikea before to cut up and use in other products because it was cheaper than going out and buying the raw materials.

[1](http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/50071170/)

[lsc]

Ah. I was thinking you wanted to make a desk, not just the top, which you could do with the 4x8 sheet, some screws, and maybe a two by four. (Am I imagining things? or did you edit your original post to say bookshelf rather than desk? it's okay, I edit my posts too; you could also make a bookshelf out of that 4x8 sheet, if your time was free and you had the carpentry skills.)

Even so, the 3' x 2' bit of 'wood product' from ikea costs almost as much as a 4'x8' piece of 'wood product' from home depot. That's more than 5 ikea tables worth of wood.

I think the dramatically increased price (percentage wise, of course, not dollar wise) of the ikea part is in the addition of the laminate on top and on the sides; you can't really cut the laminated particle board to size once you get it, unless you want exposed sawdust-wood, so we are back to manu

I mean, I'm not saying the ikea stuff isn't good; I'm just saying that they, generally speaking, are charging considerably more (as a percentage, not in terms of dollars, and for a $7 item, even if their markup is 4x, well, you probably aren't going to notice.) than what materials cost.

[biot]

I was the one who said bookshelf (no edits were made). I made it out of planks of wood and wood screws. The Ikea bookshelf uses wood planks but of a lighter/less durable kind of wood. I'm sure mine might have held up cast iron books where the Ikea version would have failed, but as a regular bookshelf for paper books, the price/performance of the Ikea product would have met my needs more than adequately at a decent cost savings.