We made ours 30" wide by 18" tall and opted for a magnetic board instead of a chalkboard on the front. We found the sheet metal for about $10 at Lowe's (it was in with the H-vac/conduit stuff).
I would have rather stained all the wood, but we were using leftovers & only had painted trim, so I covered it in black paint. (To be completely honest, I'm not really loving the look...)
We divided the inside in half & added a chain across the left side to hold some of Zeke's notebooks & magazines. On the right side, we added a shelf about 10 inches high to hold smaller items & the bottom shelf holds pencils, chalk, & crayons. I decided to paint the desktop in chalkboard paint for any notes Zeke may need to make.
We used two different types of hinges to keep the desktop at a sturdy 90 degree angle. This was definitely the biggest struggle in the building process, which may have been user error!
The roller catch we used keeps the desktop closed securely when not in use. (You can see the strike on the desktop in the picture above & the catch is on the underside of the top part of the wall piece.)
We secured the desk to the wall by using small L-brackets in each corner, making sure to get some of them into the studs.
Since we weren't able to give Zeke the X-based desk, we gave him an X-based stool instead.
We used these instructions for building the stool, but changed the size of ours to 19" wide by 12 3/4" deep by 19 1/2" tall (including cushion). We decided to put the wood on all four sides under the cushion, unlike the tutorial which only has it on the sides. I stained the wood in Minwax Early American & cut two pieces of an old foam mattress topper to cushion the stool, along with some leftover fabric from Zeke's pillows.
After seven months, I am glad to finally have all of Zeke's stuff off the floor & back in his desk! Although I don't really love the aesthetics of this desk, I really do like it's function & space saving design. Surprisingly, it holds more than my daughter's one-drawer parsons desk.