Building a Custom Reception Desk for a Local Art Gallery

By / February 3, 2019
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In this build, I make a reception desk for a local art gallery here in Colorado.  The Hunter Wolf Art Gallery.

The Top and outside wrap is made from solid Cherry, while the cabinets on the employee side are made from cherry-faced plywood.

Some of the Specialty Products I used in this project (Affiliate Links)

So I recently wrapped up this awesome project—a custom reception desk for a local art gallery. This thing has it all: a hidden drawer for packing paper (because who doesn’t love a good secret compartment?), a lit corner to showcase some featured pieces, and plenty of cabinets with cubbies and drawers to keep everything organized. Let me walk you through how I built it.

Starting With the Cabinets

I kicked things off with the cabinets since they’re the foundation of the whole desk. They’re all the same height, which made life easier—I could batch out all the sides at once. I ripped them to width on the table saw and cut them to length with my track saw.

With my cut list in hand showing which parts needed shelves and where, I set up a dado stack and knocked out all the shelf locations in one go. Then I reset the dado to cut rabbets for the bottom, backs, and top bracing. Cabinets are honestly pretty straightforward to make—the key is just making sure everything stays square.

Before assembling anything, I pre-sanded all the parts and even prefinished a few pieces that I knew would be a nightmare to reach later.

Now came the fun part: keeping track of which shelves went with which sides. Each cabinet was a slightly different width depending on its job. Some were sized to fit the printer perfectly, others were built to hold different sizes of shopping bags that needed to live under the desk.

For assembly, I stuck with good old wood glue and threw in a few staples to reinforce the joints. Nothing fancy, but it works.

The Toe Kick Trick

Here’s a tip I’ve learned over the years: build cabinets with square bottoms and make the toe kick separately. It’s so much easier and more efficient. I grabbed some offcuts from the cabinet builds, ripped them down to toe kick width, and built a base for the cabinets to sit on.

I stapled some cleats to the bottom of the cabinets so they’d basically clip into the toe kick. This made lining everything up and screwing it together on site way less of a headache.

After a quick test fit, I moved on to milling the lumber for the legs.

Laminating the Legs

The legs needed to be chunky—about 3½” thick at the bottom, tapering up to a few inches at the top. To get that thickness, I laminated two pieces of 8/4 material together.

After running them through the planer to clean things up, I spent some time matching pieces by color and grain pattern. The goal was to make the glue line as invisible as possible.

Once the glue dried, I cleaned up any squeeze-out at the jointer, cut the legs to length, and made a quick jig to hold them at the right angle for cutting the tapers at the band saw. Since I was tapering multiple opposing sides, I saved the cutoff from the first taper to use as a spacer and wedge for the others as I rotated the leg in the jig. Little tricks like that make all the difference.

Book-Matched Panels

I set the legs aside and moved on to the lower decorative panels. I wanted these to be book-matched, so I resawed some 5/4 material in half. I used a carpenter’s triangle to keep track of which edges went together as I cleaned them up at the jointer—that way I’d get a nice tight seam when they came together.

There was a bit of glue squeeze-out on each panel, so I ran them through the planer to clean them up and get them to their final thickness.

Building the Frame

Time to build the frame for the panels. I milled and ripped more 8/4 stock to width for the frame pieces. I cut the stiles to length along with the top and bottom rails, then did a dry assembly to make sure everything fit.

For the middle rails, I used the pre-assembled frame as my guide. I held each rail in position, marked its length, then cut it at the table saw. This ensured each one would fit perfectly.

I attached the rails to the legs using floating tenons. On the corner leg where the mortises intersected, I just mitered the tenons so they wouldn’t get in each other’s way.

Once all the joinery was laid out and cut, I set up a dado stack in the table saw and cut dadoes for the lower panels. Then I switched back to a standard blade and did a two-pass cut to create a large rabbet for the glass installation later.

Why two passes instead of the stacked dado? It was just a lot of material to remove at once. I felt it was safer and would give me a cleaner cut without worrying about burning the wood or having to slow down my feed rate.

Router Work on the Legs

Each leg needed a stopped dado to accept the panels, so I grabbed my router and plowed out the dadoes, then squared up the ends with a chisel.

The center dividers needed a stopped rabbet for the glass grid work. I stacked up some scrap plywood and attached a fence to give my router a stable platform to ride against while cutting.

On the legs, the rabbet needed to be stopped on both top and bottom. I notched out a piece of plywood to use as a stable platform for the router. Before cutting, I used a handsaw to notch starting and ending points to prevent any tear-out from the router.

The last thing before assembly was cutting the panels to final width. I used the book-matched seam as a centerline, measured out to where the panel should end, and ripped them to width.

Gluing Up in Sections

I glued the front wrap up in sections. The final assembly of all the sections would happen on site to make transporting the desk easier. The sections included the front L wrap, the corner display case, side wrap, each individual cabinet, and the top.

Once I had the sections glued up, I cut material for the glass dividers. To account for any cumulative error, I measured and marked each piece individually as I cut them—both rails and stiles. This approach ensured a perfect fit.

I set up a sacrificial fence to cut notches on both ends so the pieces would slide into the rabbets I’d cut earlier. To create the divided lite effect in the glass, I cut a half lap in the center of each piece. I used a spacer against the fence to reduce the chance of binding during the cut.

Finally, I reinstalled the sacrificial fence and adjusted the dado stack to cut a rabbet in all the grid work pieces to accept the glass.

I assembled each grid with a little dab of glue. Instead of clamping, I just pinned everything from behind with a pin nailer. Then I tapped them into place with a hammer. I got a little impatient on a few of them and didn’t wait long enough for the glue to dry, so they started coming apart at the center during assembly. A quick clamp pulled those center joints back tight and fixed the problem.

The Hidden Drawer

Now for the fun part—the hidden drawer for packing paper. I cut a matched pair of dadoes in two boards: one for the drawer side and one to act as a drawer glide. The glide gets screwed to the inside of the wrap and rests on top of the cabinets, giving the drawer something to slide on. A little paste wax and it should slide like butter.

I cut all the drawer parts to length and cut a dado to accept the bottom. The drawer front is held in place with a rabbet and pinned with dowels. The dowels should add enough strength to handle the weight of the paper and the abuse of being opened and closed multiple times a day.

The extra length on the back of the drawer acts as a cantilever, allowing the drawer to be fully opened while still having enough structure inside the desk to prevent it from tipping down and dumping everything out.

I did some final finessing on the drawer bottom to make sure all the parts were flush and the drawer operated smoothly.

The Glass Work

We’re getting down to the final details now. I had a local glass shop send over a sheet of frosted glass. I measured and cut each piece.

I cut some ¼” hardwood to act as glass stops and carefully pinned them in place to hold the glass. And yes, I did break one piece of glass with a wayward pin nail. I also got clumsy and dropped one on the ground. This is why you always order a little more than you need!

Drawer Boxes Galore

I had several drawers to make for the filing cabinet and a few junk drawers, so I pulled out my Leigh Dovetail jig and knocked them out. If you’re running a production shop, this is one of the best investments you can make. Once it’s set up, you can crank out drawer boxes with high tolerances all day long.

After cutting all the dovetails, I was back at the table saw cutting dadoes for the drawer bottoms and backs. I’m using Blum soft-closing hardware for drawer glides, so I pre-planned the bottom placement so the dado wouldn’t run through the visible part of the dovetail but would still have enough room to conceal the metal hardware.

Installing the Blum Hardware

At first, the Blum hardware seems pretty complicated to install, and their instructions are pretty useless (as you’d see me ignoring them if you were watching). But once you do one, it’s actually pretty straightforward. I highly recommend getting the drilling jig, though.

You place the jig on its side and use the small drill bit with a stop collar to pre-drill the holes in the front of the drawer. Then you turn the jig over with the tab down and use the larger drill bit with a stop collar to drill in the back for the guide pins.

Then you screw the orange quick-release doohickeys to the drawer front using the holes you just pre-drilled. The drawer rests on the metal drawer guide as it hooks onto the guide pin. Simple, right?

When I built the cabinets, I set them up so the drawer dividers were on the front and back, which meant I could just rest the hardware on them while I installed it. Makes holding and lining everything up so much easier.

The drawer fronts are flush with the frame, so that wood block you’d see me using to line everything up is milled to the thickness of the decorative drawer front that gets installed later.

Now I’m sure the instructions tell you exactly which of the 10 holes you’re supposed to screw through to attach the hardware to the case, but I like to live dangerously, so I just winged it and used whichever hole was convenient.

Then all you have to do is set the drawer on top of the hardware and push it shut. Once it clicks into place, you’re good to go.

Decorative Drawer Fronts

To install the decorative drawer fronts, I measured and cut each one to the width and length. I used a few spacers to help position the drawer front, added a little glue once I was happy with the fit, then used my 23-gauge pin nailer to tack it in place. This way I could open the drawer and add some clamps until the glue dried. Don’t worry—those little pin nail holes disappear once you rub some fine sawdust in them and apply the finish.

The Top

We’re almost finished! For the top, I milled up some 8/4 stock, added some floating tenons to help with alignment during assembly, glued and clamped everything, then cut it to final size. After sanding and applying the finish, it was ready to go.

Final Assembly and Installation

When fully assembled, the desk was so big I could only test-fit it in stages in the shop. There wasn’t a good place to set up the camera where you could see everything, but trust me—everything lined up nicely and the sections screwed together on site without any major problems.

The light kit I used was an LED strip light. I attached it to the underside of the top and shelf and powered it from a switch screwed to the inside of the cabinet.

The desk now lives at the Hunter Wolff Gallery in Old Colorado City. If you’re in the area, stop by and check it out—and thank the staff for their support of local artists!

This project was a blast to work on, and I’m really happy with how it turned out. There’s something special about building a piece that’s not just functional but also showcases the beautiful work of local artists. Until the next build!

I’m the owner of Benham Design Concepts, a mixed media art studio where I design and build custom furniture and other works of art using wood, glass, stone, and various metals.
In this blog, I talk about the art I create, my journey, and the things I learn along the way.

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