Web developer and designer Joel Brehm explains how to make beautiful furniture, quickly and inexpensively, using open source designs, plywood and the Innovation Studio’s computer controlled router.

When Joel Brehm took charge of the office buildout for Bolero, a small software development startup at Innovation Campus, he didn’t want to spent a lot of money or a lot of time on the project. Bolero needed furniture, desks, lockers and more.

Brehm initially planned to build the desks himself, even though he has little experience woodworking and considers himself “an amateur.” One day at Innovation Studio, manager Jerry Reif introduced Brehm to the website opendesk.cc. Opendesk offers free designs for furniture that can be cut using a CNC router like the one in the Innovation Studio.

“I knew it was exactly what I wanted: nice solid furniture that looked good, was very unique to us, but also cheap, both in terms of dollars and my time (especially since I should be spending my time working in the office and not making furniture),” Brehm says.

So far, he’s made 4 individual desks, a conference table, a stand-up breakout table, a coffee table with 3 mini stools and 4 tall stools to go around breakout table. All of that from 10 sheets of plywood. The cost: About $750 using the quality plywood from the maker space. Or, as Brehm sees it, less than the cost of a single conference table.

Brehm will show off some of the furniture he’s made and explain how to get from design to a beautiful finished product at Nebraska Innovation Studio.

Nebraska Innovation Studio is a 16,000-square-foot makerspace at Nebraska Innovation Campus with tools for woodworking, ceramics, textiles, screen printing, 3D printing and electronics. Students, faculty, alumni and members of the community are all welcome to join.