Building A Massive L-Shaped Desk For A Better Workflow, More Monitors & Space

My staining recommendations can be found in my earlier article; I ended up using the same Minwax Walnut gel stain and finish outlined in that piece.

It was three coats of stain followed by three coats of the spar urethane finish.

The stand for this desk with the 8 foot and 10 foot sides to the L-shaped desk were made of 1-inch galvanized steel. This was the strongest and most cost effective way of doing the build.

Rather than having to buy a pipe threader and spend hours of frustration meticulously threading all of the pipes, I ended up using Kee Klamp fittings for this build. For those in the US, I ordered all of these Kee Klamp fittings from SimplifiedBuiding.com. These Kee Klamps are more expensive than conventional galvanized steel connectors, but you save the time and headache of needing to thread all of the pipes, plus the cost is offset since you don't need to rent/own any pipe threader or other tools. The Kee Klamp fittings are also very easy to adjust even after all other connections have already been made, which proved to be very useful as I was still leveling and and making a few tweaks when the desk was fully assembled. So far no issues at all with these connectors and it's been my first time using them. On the bottom of the pipes were plastic feet plus small furniture protective pads.

Painting galvanized steel can be a bit tricky, but so far I'm happy with the strategy I came up with. After bathing the base in vinegar as a mild acid for working to remove the oily protective finish, I coated all of the pipes with Rustoleum LeakSeal... Yep, basically the spray can of rubber. I hadn't seen LeakSeal used before for a galvanized steel desk, but based upon not finding any better spray-based paint locally for this build, that's what I ended up going for. After two coats of LeakSeal I then did a layer of normal Rostoleum spray paint for good measure. So far this LeakSeal rubberized coating seems to be rather durable and it's designed to work across galvanized steel, concrete, and more, so will hopefully hold up well for years to come.