[rpcope1]

I mean if it has no moving parts, that's 100% true. Having spent too much time around the wealthy with "taste" I can't believe how much money people drop on dumb subpar shit when i.e. with the desk you could have spent a hundred or two for a high quality wood slab (or God forbid glued and planed your own), and afternoon with some good varnish and/or stain, and ordered or scavenged some nice commercial or educational table legs and both had something that looks better than basically anything else and can be actually customized to what you need.

[al_borland]

Not everyone is interested in carpentry as a hobby. Sometimes people just want a desk, not a project.

I may romanticize the idea of making my own stuff from time to time, but realistically, I’m never going to spend my time sourcing wood slabs, finding ways to transport said slab to my workshop, building a workshop, letting the wood dry (if not already done), learning all the details about how to best adapt the slab to a desk, building the actual desk, trying to fix the imperfections, then after installing the desk in my office… knowing those imperfections exist and the things I learn along the way, I’d be unsatisfied and thinking about how I could build another desk without those issues/compromises. Rinse and repeat forever. This sounds like a nightmare, and much more expensive than just buying a desk.

I sometimes go through phases watching woodworkers on YouTube and it’s never just—-varnish a slab and bolt on some legs. In some cases, even moving the slab around requires specialized skills and equipment.

[rpcope1]

Sure the people doing YouTube videos on fine carpentry (the ones that look like they just stole half of Woodcraft in some giant heist) are going to do everything themselves and do it what they consider right. It doesn't have to be like that. Ikea used to sell a pretty nice hardwood slab that I used for my brother's desk with a sturdy manual standing frame. I don't think we did much more than spray clear coat (and who knows he might have done something crazy like gel sealed it later). It was maybe an afternoon and a date with a hex driver and some high grit sandpaper, and it still looks better than what you can buy from Ergotron or whatever eurochic people are buying. Even common boards with a little bit of elbow grease and a few handtools can be made to look better than basically anything you can buy, and speaking from lots of experience you notice the problems for about a day before you move on (unless they're huge problems, which they rarely are) and think about something else.

All that to say, you might surprise yourself what you can do without a monster boomer wood workshop full of Festool and other unobtanium, and feel pretty good about it.

[compiler-guy]

Spray clear coat, hex driver, high grit sandpaper, elbow grease and a few hand tools. And how to use all of them.

The amount of experience behind that analysis is pretty high. You have a lot of knowledge that you got somehow. Maybe by growing up around it, maybe by taking a class or something else.

Lots of people don’t have that knowledge or the experience to do it well. And don’t really want it. None of it is all that hard, and about anyone could learn the basics pretty fast.

But lots of people prefer doing other things instead of working up that knowledge. Or, even more, figuring out that this knowledge is available and not that hard to learn.

Some projects are hard for beginners and just figuring out if their idea of a desk qualifies is even more work.

[Liftyee]

I suspect those people lack the practical skills needed to construct such a table, and the time/motivation to create with their own hands instead of purchasing.