How to Build Your Own Glass Desk with Pipe

Building a desk with a glass top can give your desk a modern and elegant look. However, when building a glass top desk, you must first decide what type of desk frame you are going to pair it with and how you will actually assemble that frame.

Pairing the glass top with a wood built desk frame is a viable option but building with wood requires experience and can take a bit of time depending on the style of frame you are creating.

For an easier approach, and in our opinion, a more sophisticated, and even industrial look, you can pair the top with a metal pipe frame (that can then be painted if desired).

Using Kee Klamp fittings and pipe, you can create a desk frame like the one in the image above without having any prior building experience or needing any expensive tools (the desk comes together using just an Allen Wrench).

On top of that, you can create a design just like the one in the post or use any of our over 80 different fittings to create your own custom design. We even have desk kits for those of you who want to take an even simpler approach.

However, in this post, we're going to cover this modern design by our customer Rob Todd (a custom fabricator and designer in Ypsilanti, MI). Rob's desk makes use of just one type of fitting and in this post, we're going to cover the details of Rob's project and how you can build one just like it.

So let's take a closer look...

Rob's Glass Desk Project Details

Rob's desk is constructed using Kee Klamp fittings and pipe to create the frame combined with a custom glass top to complete the piece.

The glass top rests on the pipe ends in six spots. At each of these points, a foam pad is placed on top of the pipe and in between the glass top so the top stays in place and it is not scratched by pipe ends.

All of the pipe is galvanized Gator Tube that has been painted with a white powder coat finish.

The desk frame is 48" wide x 24" deep x 32" tall. The glass top itself is 54" long by 27.5" deep.

The glass top has a very distinct look to it with its blueish tint and grid like pattern. Rob had been holding on to the glass panel for some time before finally using at as a top for his new desk:

"I actually have been holding onto the glass for about nine years waiting for a good use for it.  I don't know where it came from because it was in the junk pile when I was going to school for sculpture/furniture design."

How to Build Your Own Glass Top Desk:

Now, let's take a look at how the desk comes together so you can build one just like it.

Rob's desk has a unique "crisscross" design that makes use of just on type of fitting:

The Crossover fitting is the only type of fitting used in the desk frame. The desk frame uses 14 Crossover fittings in total.

The Crossover fitting uses a cross design allowing pipe to completely slide through in one direction and pipe to slide through completely in the other direction.

However, Rob used the fittings to create the connections at each corner of the frame and allowed the pipe to only slide through the fitting until it just met the edge of that fitting. You can see the exposed (open) ends of pipe at these connections (in the image above).

Rob chose to keep the exposed ends of pipe. However, alternatively a Malleable Plug could be used to cap of these exposed ends. A Malleable plug could also be used on the bottom of the desk legs.

Start Your Own Desk Build

If you just want to build a simple desk and combine it with a glass table top (or any table top for that matter) but you don't want to use a custom design, we'd recommend taking a look at our desk and table frame kits for a simple approach.

With these kits, you'd just select the kit you like and input your desired dimensions for height, length, and depth. Then, you can combine the frame with any table top you like.

If you do want to go the custom route like Rob did, you can find the Crossover fitting here. However, we'd also recommend taking a look at our entire inventory of fittings to see if there is anything there you can use to create your own custom design.

Lastly, if you need any help at all with your build, please don't hesitate to reach out to our team for help.

Whether you need help with coming up with the actual design, help picking out the fittings you'll need for your project, or you're having trouble assembling your project, our projects team is here to answer any questions you have. Our team can be reached at projects@simplifiedbuilding.com or by visiting this page and filling out the contact form.