New Desk Completed
Well it took me a bit longer than I thought. Mainly because the stain took far longer to dry and needed more coats that I planned. I’ve now had the desk in place for nearly a week and it’s great. It is a little bigger and much more sturdy than my previous one. I feel much more relaxed having a giant Apple Cinema Display on top of it.
Ok so how did it come together. After staining the desktop, and the shelf along with some wooden shelving brackets. I cut the shelf down a little bit so that I didn’t hit it with my knees. I then brought all the bits into the house for the final build. (It was far to cold outside for trying to do it in the garage!
I had some issues along the way, firstly the desktop had bowed quite a bit in painting. I assume this was because I left it drying on a workbench. This didn’t support the desk as widely as maybe it needed. I was thinking that I would need some strengthening struts to fix the bow, but in the end the metal supporting strips could be adjusted. I got the whole family to stand on the desk whilst I loosened and re-tightened each one. Fun for all the family!
Desk with Legs in Place
The next step was to attach the legs, then decide where to mount the shelf. I decided to follow the lead from my previous desk, which meant shortening the shelving brackets to make them fit.
Shelf in Place
Sorry for the poor pictures, I took them in bad lighting on my phone.
The next job on the list was to add some mounts for the power strip on the shelf and add the cable cage to store all the cables out of sight.
Desk cable system in place.
With the cable tray in place it was time to get the old desk out and new one in. I had to remove the legs to get the new one in, but I had planned for this. I then spent ages getting my kit back in and tidying cables. With the desk in place no cables can be seen underneath and only the iphone dock one is visible on the desk.
A Blank Canvas
In the next day or two I will try to take some new shots with everything in place. I need the tripod to get better shots than I have already.
Desk progress
Well progress on the desk has been slow. Mainly as it is so cold in the garage. Because of this the stain is taking longer to dry. Most of it is now done so hopefully there will be some building happening this week.
Here is a quick shot of the shelf drying.
This second shot is the desktop drying.
Apple’s Support
As most people who know me in person know, I’m a bit of an Apple fan. You only have to take a look at my desk to tell what a sucker for apple kit I am.
I’ve owned lots of Apple products, and I’ve yet to be disappointed with one of them. I’ve also loved the Genius bar service when I’ve needed them.
Two weeks ago my beautiful Apple 24in Cinema Display had to be taken into my local Apple store. It had been suffering from strange cut outs in sound. So I booked a genius bar appointment and took it in. The Genius was very helpful, booking it in for repairs, but I took it home to use it until the parts arrived. A day later I took it back in for the repair. It was all so easy. They fixed it on a Sunday so I could collect it on the Monday.
Sadly however repairing the logic board failed to fix the issue, so I took it back in the following week. They tried to fix it again, but in their testing they could replicate the issue so it hadn’t worked.
Normally at this point I’d be worrying about what the company was going to do about my issue, however with Apple I was positive they would sort things out.
Now seeing as the 24in ACD is no longer made, the genius’s couldn’t give me a replacement. So they said right we will replace it with the 27in model instead! Now the 27in ACD is far more expensive and a massive upgrade. I was over the moon!
I’m now typing away on my mac mini using the new 27in ACD. It’s simply stunning to behold! And of course massive!
So top marks for Apple and in particular the Cribs Causway Apple store staff who were superb.
There is only one downside to the new 27in ACD and that’s me wanting to pair it with an 11in Macbook Air! Ah Gordy you nugget.
New Desk Time
I’ve had various desk over the years. From shop bought ones to ones I’ve made myself. I’ve enjoyed making them very much in the past, but for my new office I decided to buy one from Ikea instead of making one. The upside to this was the cost and speed. The downside it wasn’t exactly what I wanted.
With my new setup I had a Humanscale M7 mount for my then Apple Cinema display. However the construction of the IKEA desk wasn’t good enough and the desk started to bend in the area with the vesa mount met the desk. I hate to think what my new 27in ACD would have done to it!
So with my lovely wife wanting to take a trip to IKEA for some storage items, I decided to take a look at the desk options again.
I came back with the following
A Vika Furuskog desktop
IKEA Link
It’s a large solid pine desktop that is nice a chunky. No more terrible particle board desk for me.
I then picked up 4 Vika Curry legs in red as I wanted to bring some more colour to the office.
IKEA Link
I also took a trip to B&Q to collect a shelf. I’m going to mount this to the underside of the new desk to hide the cables behind.
The first step is to stain the desk and shelf. Currently the shelf has had it’s first two coats with a third to come.
I will post a progress report when I have some.
