The quest for a better workspace

     Anyone who works from home may relate to this story.  I began working from home last year, and I wasn't really prepared to do so from a workspace perspective.  I started with a writing desk that my wife had rescued some time ago and slowly added surfaces to handle the monitors and personal laptop that I really did need.  The problem with this setup was that the writing desk was never meant to handle computers, especially more than one laptop, so it was very cramped and I couldn't use the CD/DVD drive without moving the laptop towards the front.  Below is a picture of the setup after I moved into a spare bedroom (not the original setup in the master bedroom, which was even more cramped than what this picture displays.

     Moving into the spare bedroom did afford me more surface area, but didn't relieve the basic problem of a surface that I could actually lay out documents or do any other work on, and I still couldn't open the drive bays on the work or the personal laptop.  Perhaps this may need a bit of explanation;  although many people get by with setups like the one I show above, I am very comfortable with a normal office environment, work in the Information Technology field, and for the last 15 years have had at least two monitors for every computer on my desk.  Needless to say, I almost feel physical pain when I don't have that second monitor, thus you see two laptops and two monitors on the setup above.  The size of the second monitor doesn't bug me too much (those are 9 year old Dell 17" ones in the picture) and actually find the larger monitors more of a problem than a benefit.

     Well, it happened one day that I was browsing online and got the thought to look at prices for desk mounted monitor stands.  Don't ask why, because I couldn't tell you what exactly I was thinking at the time since a desk mounted stand wouldn't possibly work with the setup I had, but sometimes I just get a thought into my head and I have to go with it.  As it happens, I found a very reasonably priced hex monitor stand (under $100 is reasonable given it could handle six 24" monitors at once).  True to my nature, I whipped out the card and two minutes later, the stand was bought.  Great, now what?  As I stated before, the desk setup I had wasn't built to secure a desk mounted stand off the back.  It didn't take me very long to come up with the beginnings of an idea though.  The two cabinet units on either side of the writing desk were of the same manufacturer, solidly built, and had the capability to put a surface on top to accommodate the monitor stand.  Next out of the drawer came the tape measure and I found that if I didn't want to sacrifice any leg room between them, the surface would have to be over 7 and a half feet wide.  Try to find a desk that large, I dare you.

     People that don't know me should be informed that once an idea gets into my head, I bull forward solving the problems until I have a complete solution.  Everything else gets set aside, and even if I'm doing something else, my own family catches me with a particular facial expression; head cocked to one side, staring at the ceiling muttering to myself.  Fortunately, I've been around long enough that I've picked up some experience here and there, but it is still a process.  I think I spent the next day going to the salvage yards and consignment markets looking for a suitable surface.  I did find a conference table without legs that may have done the job, but it was too heavy for me to move by myself, was far deeper than I wanted, was oval, and was priced far too high for my thinking.  Craigslist didn't yield any better results, and a quick search online didn't leave me with much hope that I'd find a desk or any reasonable facsimile thereof that fit what was in my mind.

     From the start of the search, I had it in my mind that this may be the case, and I moved to plan B; yup, you guessed it, I'm a guy, that means the local hardware store.  What I wanted was a surface somewhere in the dimensions of 8'x3' that could support the monitor stand off the back edge, which meant at least 3/4" plywood.  Keep in mind, I hadn't stepped foot into the hardware store yet, all of the above was done within the confines of my own skull so far, and I wasn't done, but I wanted to see if they had a piece of wood that may fit.  For anyone familiar with plywood, this could be a tall order, it couldn't be construction grade, it had to be finished and hardwood, meant to be exposed, not rough framing lumber.  As it happens, the local Home Depot had a very nice piece of birchwood with a surface so smooth I couldn't find an imperfection.  What's more, I liked how it looked (I love woodgrain).

     Did I mention that I fancy myself somewhat of an engineer?  Well, I am analytical and have a passing knowledge about weight tolerances, which means I usually OVER-engineer any build (ask my wife about the porch I built for the doublewide when we first got married with the 3/4" carriage bolts through 8"x8" posts).  I wasn't sure 3/4" plywood would be enough, so decided to double the thickness of the desk, which meant two sheets of 4"x8" glued together.  Now I had an idea of the desktop, but I wasn't done yet.  Two pieces in those dimensions meant that I'd be cutting the plywood lengthwise and have a 1'x8' strip left over from each piece.  I'd already be buying the whole sheet, so what was I going to do with the extra wood?  This epiphany wasn't a stretch, I could built shelves on either side of the desk.  After about an hour wandering around the store, I had a very good idea of what I was going to be building, with what materials, and a few extra enhancements to boot.  I walked out empty handed.

     "Wait, empty handed?" you say?  Yup, not only do I have to approve the budget with the wife, but I wanted to be absolutely sure of the design I had in mind, which meant modeling it on a CAD program.  I went home and found a free program that I'd used in the past, but found it didn't have a feature to draw exact measurements (or at least adjust the objects after I had approximated them with the mouse).  The second free program I tried did have what I wanted, and I proceeded to look up the specs on the monitor stand and draw my concept.  Below is the final result.

     This took me about two days to get it to a level of sophistication I was happy with.  I didn't bother drawing the bottom tier of the monitor stand to show the laptop trays I had ordered as they weren't critical for the measurements I was after.  All I wanted out of this drawing was the confirmation that I had enough room between the shelves I had thought of for the monitor stand and mounted equipment.  It looked good, and that Saturday, I pulled the trigger on the purchase.

     As soon as I could, I setup a mock build to ensure I had the store employee cut the wood the right way (the guy that cut the dowels didn't impress me with his measuring skills).

     I didn't waste any time getting to work, I had checked the weather and knew I had about a week before any rain was due, and I had to space the project out to let glue dry as well as allow for the stain/polyurethane finish to set.  I started in on the most detailed piece, the top surface of the desktop, where I had to drill 16 holes for the shelf supports and cut an opening for the sunken power receptacle I was going to put in-between the sheets.  I've spent enough time under desks to know that if I brought power to the surface, and then put the strips on the desktop, life is SO much easier.  Besides, I knew I had plenty of room to play with, so the 6"x6" hole wasn't too large of a sacrifice of desktop space.  Yes, now I had an electrical wiring job as well as a carpentry project on my hands.

     It took an evening and part of the next day to get the holes in the two sheets because I ran out of power on the cordless drill and had to charge the battery, then I took a step back and looked at that sunken receptacle again.  It was meant to go into a wall and had a 1/4" lip on it.  My worry was it would create too much of a gap in-between the plywood and cause the two sheets to not bond properly.  So I dug the Dremel out of the shed and routed the surface of the bottom sheet to sink it enough to allow the two sheets to be perfectly flush.  I managed to save one of the cutouts for a lid to hide the hole on the top surface as well and spent some time with the Dremel getting that piece and the edges of the top hole as smooth as I could so the cords wouldn't catch or fray on sharp edges.

     The next day I glued the two sheets together and added the decorative edge that I picked out (thanks to my Dad for the mitre box!).

     The picture directly above showed my learning curve on drilling holes through hardwood.  A word to the wise, don't drill through all the way from one side to the other, the final surface will chip as shown above.  Instead, drill until the spade bit tip breaks through, then turn the piece over and drill from the other side to finish the hole.  There may still be some chipping, but not nearly as bad as that first hole looks like.  The idea on these holes is the shelf supports, which are 1" diameter dowel cut 12" long and held in place through only one of the two 3/4" plywood sheets.  If necessary, a little glue would make them virtually one piece of wood, but I didn't think that was going to be necessary and I wanted the option to disassemble the desk if I ever had to move it.

     A couple of days into the next work week, the monitor stand arrived, and I was surprised to actually see the size of the thing.  The specs online weren't all inclusive, and I had guessed on certain dimensions.  As it turned out, I had fallen short on a couple of them, so back to the CAD program I went to make sure it was still going to work.  About an hour later, I breathed a sigh of relief, it was still good.  I would have to articulate the arms a bit more, but now I had the right measurements and the monitor stand was truly impressive.

     It was time to paint it with the combo stain/polyurethane I had purchased and let it sit for a few days.  This was the step I didn't have a whole lot of faith in my ability to get it just right.  That, combined with my impatience, led to only a single thick coat on the surface, but it actually looked pretty decent and the brush marks gave the impression of woodgrain, so I lost the actual look of the wood under the stain in favor of a Southwest style finish job.  After a few days, I decided I didn't have a problem with it and grew to like it.

     Originally, I had planned on using the two cabinets for supports, but they weren't going to do the entire job.  I needed to support the back half of the desk, so went out to find a couple of simple bookshelves to use in the back.  I didn't care about color or function, as long as they were 29 1/2" tall (the same height as the two I had already).  Walmart this time, no reason to build some from scratch.  I bought two, but one had an open end, and was missing the hardware kit.  I called the customer support line and they promised to send me the kit out.  I built the one I could and found it was actually a tiny bit taller than the units I had.

     That Friday the forecast called for rain, so I had to bring the finished desktop and all the raw materials inside.  I had wanted to finish the shelves, but settled for setting up the desk and waiting for the weather to clear.  Since I still had not recieved the hardware kit for the second shelf, I used a tripod, which worked out in my favor since the desktop turned out to have a very slight curve and was bowed up in the middle.  When I got it upstairs, I also found that the second shelving unit wasn't necessary, this thing was solid enough for my 200 lbs weight to climb on top and assemble the monitor stand.

     So I've worked at the desk for almost a week now and a break in the weather has allowed me to at least assemble the shelves, but not to apply the stain yet.  Here is the desk as it sits today: