Building a DIY Home Office? 247
Rednerd asks: "I just moved into a new apartment and I'm almost done painting and running the cat 5. I have been looking at office furniture for a new desk to become the new home for all of my misc. computer gadgetry, but I haven't been able to find anything that really fits. (No one seems to sell a desk with room for two 19" monitors, seven computers, a beer fridge, coffee maker, and a small compartment to serve as a shrine for my little plush penguin - Potelé) I'm leaning toward building a custom desk for my computers. With all the talk on Slashdot about creating an ultra-efficient cubicle, I was wondering what other slashdotters have created in the way of DIY home offices?"
Shelving (Score:2, Insightful)
build one with a friend (Score:4, Insightful)
A friend and I designed and built a new desk when I moved to fit the room and my gear perfectly. (Well, my friend did most of the work) It's doable. And it turned out to be a LOT cheaper than the suitable desks I found out there.
If you DO want to buy a ready-made desk, don't look in furniture stores, they just sell kiddy stuff, and desks for people that need a place for their electric typewriter. Go look at companies that sell to other companies. They're usually more difficult to find, even though they often have a showroom (though just not visible from the outside) and sell to regular people. They're insanely expensive though. But, if you really want ready-made, they'll usually have something that fits.
The cool thing about making your own desk is not only that your desk gets to be BIG, but you also get to choose the materials and colors.
The downside about making your own desk is that it's too difficult to make a desk that has adjustable height, so you have to be REALLY sure how high your surface needs to be (mine is 2 cm too high).
If you are going to make your own desk, make it deep enough. Commercial desks usually are too shallow to place a keyboard in front of your monitor and still be able to rest your elbows in a comfortable manner.
Under $125 (Score:5, Insightful)
Unsightly? maybe... but functionality is great!
Suggestions.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Next, for a desk, consider using an interior door for a desktop. You can put it on top of some file cabinets (which have foam rubber on top to cushion the vibrations). Put some kind of nice, hard finish on it - Varathane, Minwax or such.
Finally, Give up that Coffee. It will raise your cholesterol, make your glands swell, and make your desk sticky.
The solution is modularity (Score:2, Insightful)
Everything is modular, no bigger than it needs to be, and on wheels.
Every computer gets its own desk. As small as possible, with as few gimmicks as possible - no CD towers, no printer shelves, no cubbyholes; the only thing I'll accept, if the desk isn't low enough already, is a keyboard shelf, and that has to be wide and deep. It has to be on wheels. The ones I've come to like are the very simple little rolling workstation platforms that you can find at most computer or office superstores for about $60 - basically a flat desktop with a keyboard drawer and a bottom shelf to stash the tower.
Then I have one adjustable height folding table - Sam's for about $40 - about 30" deep x 72" wide; I've set that at a convenient keyboard height, and I usually have a laptop or two set up there. But it's easy to take the laptops off and set up a tower/monitor/keyboard at a convenient height for setup, modification, debugging. I've also got my DSL router, network switch, and a couple of power blocks velcro'd to that table at one end toward the back.
Then I've picked up a couple of sets of lovely maple folding tv tables - four tables, plus a stand, for typically $20-30 bucks. I've got a scanner more or less permanently set on one, and a printer on another. The others come and go as my need for horizontal space grows and shrinks.
Add one of those plastic 4-drawer cabinets (any office superstore, about $20-30) and a couple of file crates with wheels that live under the laptop table when I'm not actively working with them, and a bookshelf on one wall, and I've got a very efficient and flexible workspace!
Remember the three M's of home office furniture - Modular, Minimal, and Mobile.
Good luck.
Richard
Creating an inexpensive solution (Score:3, Insightful)
I use a desk from Office Depot (about $60) for my workstation - it's wider than normal computer desks, so you can fit your mouse, keyboard and a frosty beverage on the main desk surface. A shelf in the back comfortably holds 2 monitors, and the space under the shelf gives me plenty of room to hold all those little odds and ends. I have two of the desks together at about a 90 degree angle, and they make a great work area.
The other trick was to get a decent chair with height-adjustable arms (about $100) and set them so that the top of the arms is roughly even with the desk. I've had tendinitis and carpal tunnel in the past, but I haven't had any trouble at all working in my home office.
Re:Metro Shelving...Bakers' Racks (Score:3, Insightful)
-dan
Re:Try Creativity + 4x8 sheet of plywood (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds as though you were creating a non-rectangular table top. In a case like that, it's a good idea to do a mock-up with pink or blue foam insulation board. It's a 4 foot by 8 foot sheet (just like plywood but a lot cheaper), cuts a lot easier, is thick enough (half to three-quarters of an inch) that it won't "flop". You can put it where the table top is going to go, sit down at it and try it on for size (but don't expect it to hold your monitor up!!!), modify its shape with a utility knife (use duct tape to "cut it bigger"), and then when you have it the way you want it, use it as a template by which to cut the plywood.