Build a Heavy Duty Workbench with Adjustable Legs for Under $250

Howdy folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. If you like what you see, you should definitely stay tuned. I’m talking about the workbench. Ever since I completed my garage renovation, I’ve had a big empty space right here, and I knew that I was going to fill it someday with a workbench. I looked and looked online to try to find a workbench that would fill this space, be good and strong, and wouldn’t break the budget, and they’re just not out there. If you want something that’s good and strong and big, then you’re looking at probably $500, maybe $1,000, maybe even more for something like that. So I knew I was going to have to build it myself.

The problem is that it was gonna have to be strong enough and big enough that if I wanted to do a transmission rebuild, I could throw a transmission on here, or if I wanted to change gears, I could throw a differential up here, or maybe I could put an entire dash up here and refurbish that. There’s a lot of reasons that I needed something strong, sturdy, and big, and this is what I came up with. All told, this is probably about $250. Now, that’s not exactly cheap, but compared to what you would spend to get something like this off the shelf, it’s a real bargain. I got it on casters, so it’ll roll around the shop nice and easy. Right now, it’s plugged into the wall, so it won’t roll quite that easy. Got some illumination so I can see what I’m doing.

Basically, this is two sheets of three-quarter inch birch plywood cut into pieces and then sandwiched together using glue and screws for the top, and then some poplar going around for the trim pieces. This is actually bed liner, so is this up here. This piece back here is just some leftover plywood I already had. The lights and the electrical strip, so that was a no-brainer. And the only thing that I couldn’t get locally was these legs, which I got from Amazon. Now, I like them because they’re adjustable. You can actually change the position to raise the workbench up and down.

I spent quite a while in quite a bit of mental gymnastics trying to figure out exactly how I was going to get this workbench together, what materials I was going to use. I’ve seen a lot of YouTube videos, guys that build workbenches like this, but a lot of the ones that I watched were guys with woodworking tools, planers, and routers, and all kinds of stuff that I just don’t have. I’ve got some handyman stuff and some mechanic stuff, and that’s about it, and that’s all I used to put this together. So we’re gonna go to past Ed, who’s gonna show you exactly how I did this. Like I said, keep in mind I am not a woodworker or a cabinet maker. I’m just some schmoe who wanted to put a nice workbench together for as little money as possible. So there’s a few mistakes in there, but overall I hope you’ll agree I think it looks pretty damn good. So take it away.

So my plan for this workbench is to be about 72 inches wide by about 34 inches deep and right around 38 inches high, although I’m not entirely sure how high I want it quite yet, but that’s why I’ve got some adjustable feet here. I found them on Amazon. We’ll see how well they work. I’m excited to try those out. This is three-quarter inch cabinet grade birch plywood that I got from a local lumber shop. I had them cut it to the right size, but they cut it to the wrong size. It’s pretty close, but it’s not exactly right. They cut each piece individually and changed the saw measurements every time they cut, so they’re all just a little bit different. So what I’m going to have to do is put everything together and then cut it all myself.

So this is three-quarter inch plywood. I’m gonna do three layers. I bought two pieces. I got sort of a big piece here that’s gonna go on the bottom, that’s my full size, and then I’m gonna have a sort of a middle sandwiched layer that’s got some cut pieces, so two bigger cut pieces, and I’m gonna slide a couple of smaller cut pieces here in the center, cut from this piece. And then once that’s glued and screwed together, I’ll put another big full piece on top of that and glue and screw and clamp all that together, giving me a top that’s about two and a half inches thick. And then on top of that, I’m going to put this quarter inch hardboard, and the hardboard is going to serve as a layer that’s going to be sacrificial. If I ding it up, if I paint it, if I do anything weird to it, get oil on it, water on it, whatever, I can replace that piece. It’s really cheap, and that way I’m not digging into or dinging up my actual plywood.

Once I’ve got this two and a half inch slab built with my screws and my glue, I’m doing both. Just never done this before. I’d probably just be fine doing just screws, but I’m going to go ahead and use the glue as well. I’m never going to want to take this apart. I don’t ever want it to come apart, so I’m doing everything that I can to make sure it stays together. So once that big slab is together, I’m going to kind of cut all four sides to be nice and square so that everything lines up nice, and then I’ve got this poplar here that I’m going to use as edging material to go around all the edges. And I’m actually going to paint this with a bed liner. I’ve actually got bed liner somewhere else here in the garage, and I step into the house. It’s painted over concrete, but it works really well. And I’m also thinking about painting the top of my desk with the same stuff just to sort of give it a little bit more chemical resistance and just overall more durability. So that’s the plan. We’re gonna see how that works out.

Of course, once all that is done, I can put my legs on the bottom of it, and I’m also planning on building sort of a, I don’t think the word is backsplash. We were working with a workbench. I’m not sure what the term would be, but it’s a back that’ll go up against the wall so that I don’t roll screws or nuts or pencils or whatever off the back of it and have it fall onto the floor. That’ll also serve as a place where I can stick a light that’ll shine down and give me plenty of illumination for whatever I’m working on. And I’ve also got a power strip that I’m planning on putting in there. So it’s a big build, but I mean, it’s big for me. I’m not a woodworker, so I’m hoping this will all go swimmingly well. I’m sure it will not, but we shall see exactly how it goes. So I’m looking forward to getting started, so let’s get to cutting.

So the first measurement that I’ve got to make is between here and here. This is going to be my middle sandwich layer, and I’ve got to fill this gap here with wood, and I’m going to do that with this piece of wood that came off my original 4×8 sheet. I’m gonna have to cut it twice, one piece here and one piece here, and so I need to measure how wide they got to be and how long they’ve got to be to go in here. Now, I’m actually going to measure them a little bit more than the size of this gap, and that’s because if I have them sticking out a little bit here or if they push these two boards out that way just a little bit, it’s okay because, like I said, I’m gonna be cutting off all four edges at the very end anyway, so it’ll end up being even. And I’d much rather cut them too large and have to cut pieces off the end than cut them too small and create scrap wood. So that’s what we’re going to do. This is about 24 and 1/8, which I’m going to say is about 25, which means each piece needs to be 12 and a half. And this way we are exactly 34. At least he cut that part right, but I’m gonna go probably 34 and a quarter, 34, and I’ll go 34 and a half, so each piece needs to be 34 and a half.

I picked up this handy cutting guide from Lowe’s. We’re gonna see if it even is worth the money I paid for it. I don’t have a table saw, so I’m just gonna have to do all these cuts with my handy dandy circular saw. So here’s my bottom piece. All the pieces that I got are just a little bit bowed, and I think that’s probably because they sat in my garage for a little while. But it’s not a big deal. You just want to make sure that when you’re gluing this stuff together that you have the bows opposing each other. So if it bows like this, then you want to have the other one that goes like that. So that’s the, when you clamp the edges, they come down. So you want the bowie part facing each other in the middle, if that makes any sense. This piece here is of the two big pieces I’ve got, it’s the least bowed, and it’s bowing a little bit this way. That’s exaggerated, but so there’s a hump in the middle, and that’s what I want so that when I put these pieces on and get it all screwed and glued, if I clamp it and screw it right, these pieces will help form the bottom piece and remove a little bit of the bow. And then the worst bowed piece is the last piece that I have. It’s set up over here, and that’ll go on top with the bow sort of humping down in the middle, and then that when I clamp it around the edges, it’ll bring it down into shape, and the screwing and gluing should take care of all of that.

The next job is to get these pieces laid out exactly how I want them as the middle part of my sandwich, and I didn’t do a great job cutting these middle pieces square, and I think that’s because it looks good there, but when I put this piece in, yeah, you can see a great big warp right there. So I think I’m going to flip this around that way, and I got a gap right here. And the reason I think is because I used that guide, but I had both sides of the guide clamped, but it was such a long run that I think the center of the guide bowed a little bit, and so I kind of curved as I was going through. And that’s one of the reasons why I used the guide early on, so that I can figure out how to solve issues like this later on. So let me bring this in so you can take a look at what I’m talking about. Here’s the guide that I used, and you can see that it’s got this little joiner in the middle that joins the two pieces together. Then you screw it down to get it nice and tight. The problem is that this piece here still flexes even back and forth this way just a little bit, so I think as I was moving along with my saw, this probably flexed a little and caused this little bit of a curvature as I was cutting it. So to solve that next time I use this, I’ll probably screw a block right here to the, you know, on the back of this to keep this from moving at all. I’ll get this exactly where I want it, screw a block down and prevent this from moving, and then of course I’ll clamp the ends, and that way no matter how much pressure I put on this as I’m going along, it won’t move.

I think that’s probably what happened. I used the laser level to give me some nice straight lines I could make my marks from. I wanted plenty of screws to make sure the top was going to stay together forever, especially considering the middle layer was in four pieces. Placing screws in predictable locations is important since I didn’t want to bump into any of these later when I put my final piece of plywood on. So I pre-drilled my holes using a countersink bit. Probably overkill and plywood, but you want to make sure not to skip this step. If you’re using something like MDF, countersinking the holes will prevent the material from bulging when you set the screws, which makes sure you have a nice flat surface to glue.

I got my pilot holes all drilled, my wood’s all cleaned up and ready to go, so now I’m going to do my first set of gluing and screwing. I’m only going to do half at a time of this center layer so that I don’t have to worry about my glue setting up too quickly and giving me problems. Now, I’ve never done this before, but I went and got this little bottle that’s supposed to be for rolling glue on, so we’re gonna see how it works. Okay, maybe we’ll go the wrong way. Oh, there’s that. That’s it, I’m going the wrong direction. The spout should be on top. Now the roar that I’ve read says that you should do this from the center out so that you push the glue from the center toward the outside of the boards. I actually used coarse thread drywall screws for this. They’re perfect because they grip well, don’t move too much material, and I had them lying around. I used one and a quarter inch screws so I would only go into two sheets of plywood.

So this roller is okay, but I think once I run out of the juice inside of here, I’m just going to pour it on with the bottle and then use the roller to roll it. That coming out of this bottle is not super great. As a matter of fact, I’m just gonna do that. Yeah, can’t say that I recommend this roller. It’s what I have, so it’s what I’ll use, but I think if I had to do it over again, I’d use a squeegee or maybe even like a credit card kind of thing. So more round two of gluing and screwing is complete. I’ve got my entire middle part of the sandwich all glued and screwed together, and I got the clamps around the outside just because I can. One thing to note about this whole endeavor is that this is a mechanics workbench. This is not a woodworker’s workbench. If they were a woodworker’s workbench, I would not be doing it this way. In fact, I wouldn’t be doing it at all because woodworkers’ workbenches have much tighter tolerances, and they’ve got to be completely flat, and there’s a lot of things to consider with a mechanics workbench. I just need a surface to be able to pound on, and so that’s really all this is. Like I said, I probably don’t even need the glue, but I’m using it anyway, so you know, if it doesn’t set up right or it doesn’t glue perfectly, then you know, who’s ever gonna know because it’s screwed together.

So the same goes with the sort of fit and finish. I mean, not all of these edges are perfect. Certainly, there’s some gaps and stuff in there, so I’m going to fill some of it in with some wood putty and sand it down before I do my next round, and that’s about all there is to it. So we’re going to let this set up and cure, and then I will be back to do round three. The bottom piece is gonna go on next. I’m gonna do that all as one big piece, so we’re gonna screw that up or screw it up. That’s kind of funny. So what about the pilot holes in there? I’m going to pour a bunch of glue on this, and I’m going to use a squeegee or something next time. This, I, I’m sorry, this little contraption here, this might be good for arts and crafts or something. It is not good for something like this. It just, the volume of glue is not good. The roller doesn’t work very well. I’m just gonna throw it in the garbage. So next time, we’re just gonna pop the cap on the glue bottle, pour it on, and then just squeegee it up and plop the new piece on, and that should be a lot quicker and easier, and I should be able to get that piece on before the glue starts to set because I think I noticed this last time that some of this glue was starting to set even while I was trying to spread it out with this thing. We will see you when I come back to do the next piece.

It’s been a few hours since I glued and screwed the first set of panels. It’s more than enough time for the clamping time to have gone by on the glue that I used. The clamp time for that’s about 60 minutes, so plenty of time. So I went ahead and took the clamps off, inspected everything. Everything looks good, and I got my last piece put here on top. I should note that I also put some wood filler in and sanded things down, made it nice and smooth just to help the glue to adhere to a nice flat surface. Probably unnecessary, but I did it anyway, so there you go.

One thing to note is you want to make sure if you’re doing this that you put these holes that I’m gonna drill, the spots for these holes, make sure that they’re not lining up with any of the screw locations on the first set of panels that I glued and screwed together. You don’t want your screws running into each other. I took care of that by coming in about two inches instead of one inch, but last said I did one inch from the edge. This set I did two inches from the edge, and I made sure that none of my lines going through the middle here are going to match any of the lines on the previous two panels that I did, so should be good to go. Good to go. I’m gonna go ahead and pre-drill all my holes. Once those are all done, I’ll get this cleaned up, take it off, slap down my glue, pop this panel on, get it clamped down, get it screwed, and let it sit overnight, and then tomorrow we can come back and attack it again.

So, so, so do the following day. Here we are one day later. My slab is about as solid as it’s ever going to be, and so now I’m going to take my piece of hardboard and put it on what is going to be the top of my workbench, get it screwed down. I’m only going to use about like eight screws around the perimeter just to keep it from going anywhere, and then I will cut the entire thing all together, all four sides, so that everything is the exact same size. Do now I’m about ready to cut. What I’m going to do to prevent this guide from wiggling is screw down a board right here to prevent it from moving in as I’m pushing the saw up against it. So I’ve got my measurements for both ends and here in the middle. Let me just verify my measurement here because this is the bottom of my table. I don’t really care if I’ve got some extra screw holes in there. It’s way more important to me that I’m straight on this cut, and I don’t have to worry about this thing moving. Moment of truth right here. So it looks really straight. I’m really happy with that. The only issue is that the blade isn’t quite deep enough to go all the way through the hardboard on the bottom of this, so I’m just going to, I’ve got a little multi-tool that’s got a little tiny saw blade knot that I can go through and just sort of clean that up. Oh, all right, there’s one side cut and even up. Well, there it is, a mostly squared off tabletop. Yeah, I’m pretty happy with that.

The only thing left for me to do now is to cut my trim pieces. I’m going to use this chop saw for that since they’re kind of thin. So hopefully you can hear me talk to you. It’s pretty windy outside, but such a great when you live in southern New Mexico. So here we go. Here we are back in the garage. Everything is cut. All of my trim pieces are laid out and ready for paint. While I’m painting them, I’m going to go ahead and also paint the top of this desk. It’s seen better days, and there’s pretty much nothing I could do to it that would make it worse, so we’re going to put some truck bed liner on it and see how that works. This is just Rust-Oleum truck bed coating. Got it from Walmart, and then I’m using a Zinsser Bullseye 123 primer. I’ve had a look with that in the past, so that’s what we’re using for all this stuff, and let’s get to it.

So I love this bed liner from Rust-Oleum, but I had a hell of a time with the cans clogging up. If you look at reviews for this brand, you’ll see I’m not alone. Clogging is the number one complaint. In fact, I had such a problem that I thought I might need to throw several full cans away because I just couldn’t get any paint out. The solution turned out to be a combination of brake cleaner and a small pick set. I used brake cleaner to clean out the caps and the stems on the cans when they would inevitably clog, then used the pick to enlarge the hole in the caps. This allowed me to get enough paint out to finish the job, but next time I’ll just get the roll-on stuff.

I just used regular deck screws to secure the back to the top of the table since nobody will ever see it. The blue line I snapped lines up with a plywood edge on the other side so I can see where the screws need to be. We’re to the point in the build where I’m going to put on the legs, so I want to talk a little bit about what these are. I found these on Amazon. They’re table legs meant for this purpose. They also move up and down, if I can get them to move. There we go. So they’re adjustable height. Now, there’s only like three or four different settings that you can put them on. It’s based on where you put the bolt through. I’m not entirely sure how high I want this yet, so I’m just gonna mount these and get them on and see where the height puts me at.

I also went out and bought a set of heavy-duty casters. These are like 20 bucks at Home Depot. They’re made for a wire rack, but they’ll work fine for this. For the most part, you have to drill out, so there’s holes in the bottom of these that’s actually meant for feet that come with the legs, which is a little screwable leveling feet that come with them. I’m not going to use those. I’m going to drill these holes out a little bit bigger with a stepper bit, and then I’m going to put these casters on so that I can move my table around wherever I want it. It means this kit, this set of four comes with two locking casters and two were just regular swivel casters, so this should work out perfect.

The first thing I need to do is actually drill these holes out. I don’t want to have to be doing something like this, so I’m going to take these off of here, get these holes drilled out, get these casters mounted, and then once they’re on there, I can get the entire leg assembly put on to the table. So like a full 40 percent of any of my videos is like just me looking for that. I can’t find, I mean, around here somewhere, I just used it. As you can see, I’ve got the table flipped over and on its legs, got the casters put on, rolled it around the garage a little bit. It works really well. I’m super happy with it.

So the next thing to do is to finish building out all of the trim pieces in this little backsplash cubby area, and it’s going to be hard for you to see, but right here I’ve got my laser level set up in a straight line directly down the center of this board so I can mark exactly where my screws are going to go. I’m using these humongous lag bolt screws because I think they’re gonna look nice. It’s kind of for decoration. I don’t need anything this humongous just to hold this one piece of trim on, but I think it’s gonna look nice, and it’ll definitely hold it in there, so not to worry about it.

So I want to make sure that when I do this that I drill pilot holes. That’s why I’m marking everything right now because when you’re putting something this big into the side of a piece of plywood, you definitely want to do pilot holes. Even if there’s as much meat as there is right here now, even with a pilot hole, I would never attempt to put something this large into just the side of a single three-quarter inch piece of plywood. But since I’ve got all these stacked together and they’re all one solid piece essentially, I think I can get away with this. So I used my countersink with a small drill bit to set the initial hole locations for the trim and then went back to drill out a much larger pilot hole in the plywood edge for the actual lag screw. I used clamps just to keep the top of the trim even with the top of the workbench.

So for the back cubby, I used construction screws that looked very similar to the lag screws I used for the front and sides, just much smaller. Drilling pilot holes for this was critical since I was joining the trim to the edge of a single piece of three-quarter inch plywood. I was a little afraid that I might create bulges in the plywood this way, but everything went together without a problem.

So do, do, man am I glad this workbench is finally done. It pretty much puts a cap on my entire garage renovation. It was the last thing that I had planned to do and needed to get in here to say that my garage is basically done, and it gives me a really, really great space to do any kind of work on any kind of parts I could imagine for the truck. Now, I know this isn’t really a Bullnose episode, and you know I’m kind of all about that, but it is about the garage, and this is Bullnose Garage, so there’s going to be some videos about the garage interspersed in there, so that’s what this is for.

You know, I spent a lot of time watching YouTube videos, and I saw a lot of guys putting together workbenches kind of like this, but I didn’t see anyone who put one together that was relatively inexpensive, had adjustable legs so you can move it up and down, and just with the route that I was going to go, which is laminating some plywood with a hardboard top for durability and then some nice little accent touches. You know, I really like this bed liner that’s really neat. I like it enough that I put it on my desk too, so obviously I’m a fan of that. Yeah, I just, I’m just so happy with how it turned out. I can’t imagine doing it any other way.

As always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, internet ramblings, stick them below. Thanks again for watching, guys. We will see you next time.