Monday, June 25, 2007
The Quest for the Perfect Desk
Posted by Chris Gohlke in "OFF-TOPIC" @ 07:00 AM
A while back I posted on my home office setup. More recently, I finally finished work on my desk and given Jason's recent post on cable managementthought some of you might be interested in how I handled the problem.
I wanted a desk that was big enough to hold all my computer equipment and I wanted it to be on wheels. There are two reasons for this. First, I can move my desk wherever I want without having to disconnect and reconnect everything. Second, it is so much easier to work on the wiring when you can easily roll it out from the wall. Other than some really high end custom desks, I could not find anything that was large and sturdy enough and was also on wheels, so I figured I would need to build something myself.
After the break, see what I came up with for around $150 in materials.
The main part of the desk is a rolling wire shelf unit from Sam's club ($80). These things are extremely sturdy and can hold way more weight than I will ever put on it. In assembling the shelf unit, I spaced the shelves to leave a larger gap at desk height and used a piece of precut counter top from Lowe's ($50) to make the desktop. I used a drill press to make holes in each corner of the counter top so that it would fit just like a shelf. This was the only difficult part of building this and I would highly suggest that you have at least one other person helping you drill the holes so that you can keep it level in the drill press. Finally, I used pegboard and bunch of wire ties ($20) to mount all the little stuff to the back of the unit to keep all the clutter off the desk. Here are some pictures of the final results.
Figure 1: The new desk from the front.
Figure 2: The new desk from the back.
I'm particularly fond of the cable management. The entire desk is self contained except for a power cord and two cables (Internet and TV). If I had it to do over again, I'd use a longer counter top for a bit more desk space, but overall, I'm very happy with this setup.
Chris Gohlke is a Contributing Editor for Digital Media Thoughts. He loves Sci-Fi and loves to get his hands on real-life tech gadgets. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, USA with his wife and three cats.
I wanted a desk that was big enough to hold all my computer equipment and I wanted it to be on wheels. There are two reasons for this. First, I can move my desk wherever I want without having to disconnect and reconnect everything. Second, it is so much easier to work on the wiring when you can easily roll it out from the wall. Other than some really high end custom desks, I could not find anything that was large and sturdy enough and was also on wheels, so I figured I would need to build something myself.
After the break, see what I came up with for around $150 in materials.
The main part of the desk is a rolling wire shelf unit from Sam's club ($80). These things are extremely sturdy and can hold way more weight than I will ever put on it. In assembling the shelf unit, I spaced the shelves to leave a larger gap at desk height and used a piece of precut counter top from Lowe's ($50) to make the desktop. I used a drill press to make holes in each corner of the counter top so that it would fit just like a shelf. This was the only difficult part of building this and I would highly suggest that you have at least one other person helping you drill the holes so that you can keep it level in the drill press. Finally, I used pegboard and bunch of wire ties ($20) to mount all the little stuff to the back of the unit to keep all the clutter off the desk. Here are some pictures of the final results.
Figure 1: The new desk from the front.
Figure 2: The new desk from the back.
I'm particularly fond of the cable management. The entire desk is self contained except for a power cord and two cables (Internet and TV). If I had it to do over again, I'd use a longer counter top for a bit more desk space, but overall, I'm very happy with this setup.
Chris Gohlke is a Contributing Editor for Digital Media Thoughts. He loves Sci-Fi and loves to get his hands on real-life tech gadgets. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, USA with his wife and three cats.
