I needed an upgrade in my at-home office so I picked up this beautiful walnut slab from Mede Lumber last summer. It sat in my garage for 10 months before I was finally able to spend some time on it.

First I took off the bark and did a basic clean and sand on the live edges. Then I set up my home-made slab flattening jig and got both sides flat and cleaned up. I’d only done this once before on a much smaller piece and I was a little surprised how smoothly everything went.

While the overall shape was great, the live edge jutted out a bit too far in one of the corners (and had some cracking), so I used a grinder to take off some material and carve a new natural-looking shape into that part of the edge. Then I squared off the two short sides with the Festool track saw. From there I did a ton of sanding and filling small cracks, knots, and bug holes with Starbond. After a final sand I finished with Rubio Monocoat Pure and mounted to my existing standing desk frame. 61” long x 24-25” wide x 2-1/4” thick. Major upgrade!