I’m waiting for some things to come in the mail before I continue with Sam & Max’s office, so I took a break from the structure to build Sam’s desk. Here’s a render from Telltale’s game that shows what it looks like.

We only ever see Sam’s desk from the back, so I don’t know what the other side looks like, but I assume it’s a kneehole desk with drawers on either side of the chair hole.

I cut all of the side, front, and top pieces from 2″ wide, 1/16″ thick basswood. I wanted to get all the pieces out of one 24″ strip of wood, so I was more focused on that than on copying the dimensions of a real desk. The front is a little less than 5″ wide and the sides are 1.75″ wide. The legs are 2 1/8″ tall (1/8″ will poke out under the desk and the rest will be inside the desk for support).

I used Minwax Aged Oak gel stain for these. I’d originally intended to use this color for the wainscot, doors, etc. in the roombox but grabbed the wrong can (Walnut) at the time and didn’t realize it until later. It worked out, though, since the furniture needs to be a lighter color than the trim. If I’d used Aged Oak in the roombox, I wouldn’t have something slightly lighter than this to use for the furniture.

The top needs to be thicker than the rest but I didn’t have a thicker piece of 2″ basswood, so I cut two top pieces to glue together. I clamped them while the glue dried, with the wood wrapped in wax paper so the clamps wouldn’t leave marks.

The pieces shifted when I clamped them so the edges weren’t flush when the glue dried. I cleaned them up on the disc sander.

Here’s the desk upside down. I used 1/4″ square basswood for the legs and as supports in the corners that don’t have legs.

And right-side up. I had planned to add drawers to the pedestals, but I’m not sure if I’ll bother, since you won’t see this side of the desk inside the roombox.

Because I didn’t plan out my measurements carefully, I ended up with a desktop that was exactly the same depth as the desk, rather than overhanging. I didn’t like the seam from the two pieces being glued together, so this was a happy accident.

I fixed it by gluing a basswood frame around the outer edge of the desktop.

Next I added mitered pieces of 1/4″ basswood around the front and sides to create panels.

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The windows and doors in the Sam & Max roombox will need to be placed in the holes before the false walls are glued in. For this reason I needed to stucco and paint the false walls outside of the roombox. (Normally I like to assemble first, then decorate.)

I was concerned about the center wall not having a lot of support behind it, especially around the windows, so I added spacers around the window holes.

These will stabilize the wall and will also enable me to glue the windows to the false wall before I glue in the wall, which I think will work better than trying to glue them in the exact right position on the outer wall (potentially smearing glue all over the graphics in the process).

The bottom portion of the wall will be covered by wainscot that I’ll make out of 3″ basswood. I drew a pencil line over the top edge so I’d know how far down the wall to stucco.

I taped off where the wainscot will start and also the top 1/4″ of the wall, where the molding will go.

The stucco is watered down wood filler, spread and textured with a sponge brush. You can read more about this technique here and here.

Once the whole wall was stuccoed, I covered the windows with tape to protect the stained wood and inserted them in the holes.

Then I added more stucco around the window edges to fill in the gaps.

I let that dry for about 15 minutes, then popped the windows out while the stucco was still wet and let them dry overnight. The area around the windows looks much better than it did pre-stucco!

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