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.

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.