All valid, and that's the point.
I may romanticize the idea of making my own stuff from time to time, but realistically, I’m never going to spend my time sourcing wood slabs, finding ways to transport said slab to my workshop, building a workshop, letting the wood dry (if not already done), learning all the details about how to best adapt the slab to a desk, building the actual desk, trying to fix the imperfections, then after installing the desk in my office… knowing those imperfections exist and the things I learn along the way, I’d be unsatisfied and thinking about how I could build another desk without those issues/compromises. Rinse and repeat forever. This sounds like a nightmare, and much more expensive than just buying a desk.
I sometimes go through phases watching woodworkers on YouTube and it’s never just—-varnish a slab and bolt on some legs. In some cases, even moving the slab around requires specialized skills and equipment.
All that to say, you might surprise yourself what you can do without a monster boomer wood workshop full of Festool and other unobtanium, and feel pretty good about it.
The amount of experience behind that analysis is pretty high. You have a lot of knowledge that you got somehow. Maybe by growing up around it, maybe by taking a class or something else.
Lots of people don’t have that knowledge or the experience to do it well. And don’t really want it. None of it is all that hard, and about anyone could learn the basics pretty fast.
But lots of people prefer doing other things instead of working up that knowledge. Or, even more, figuring out that this knowledge is available and not that hard to learn.
Some projects are hard for beginners and just figuring out if their idea of a desk qualifies is even more work.
