Desk upgrades for Sabriena and Duncan
Sabriena and to a slightly lesser extent I have both been bothered since moving by the fact that her and Duncan’s desks don’t match. This was fine in the last house, they were at opposite ends of the room, but now they’re right next to each other and it’s terrible feng shui that bothers us every time we walk in the door.
The original plan was to duck down to Ikea and pick up a couple of matching desks, since we wanted something a tiny bit nicer than what Kmart offered… this was an issue because the nearest Ikea is several hours away, and we’re not headed down there any time soon, and it’s much too far to go for just this. Shipping on the two desks she wanted was astronomical, putting the whole price tag in the high-hundreds range, which we’re both much too cheap for.
I had showed her in the past what people do with “his and hers battlestations” using countertops, and we threw the idea around a bit about using manufactured wood benchtops to create a single, long desk, sitting on top of supports that I - something of a wannabe amateur cabinet maker it seems - would make. I drew up some sketches, and she skeptically went with me to Bunnings to take a look at the countertops on Friday.
After finding only the hideously expensive stuff after about 20 minutes of searching, I reluctantly asked for help and was shown that they were out in the lumber section, not where the flat-pack kitchen stuff is. But Sabriena quite liked them, so on Saturday morning we picked up a couple, and a couple sheets of MDF and other materials, the entire shebang costing less than $300. After a very long Saturday afternoon, we had the first fit put together, and they can use it temporarily this week as it must come apart next week for the electrician to get access to the wall behind it.
So next weekend I’ll take it apart, glue it back together, seal and paint the MDF portions, and after making a couple of tweaks it should be ready for reinstalling on the following Tuesday or Wednesday after the electrician has been and gone.
We’re pretty rapt with how it looks so far though, even though the MDF isn’t the most attractive material to leave raw. The entire desk is just shy of the 3.6 meters long, 600mm wide is comfortable but not huge (like my desk is), each individual desk section is 1400mm long, but the entire thing is one long surface. There’s an 800mm wide cabinet directly in the middle that houses the printer/scanner. On top of this, screwed to the underside of the desk supports, lives the UniFi switch, so it’s out of the way. We’ll install headphone hooks, as well as some cable hooks and velcro straps for cable management under the desk and everything should look pretty amazing.
I suspect next weekend will be fairly long also, but hopefully they use it for quite a long time. Unfortunately I’ve now got a serious case of desk envy. :(
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