http://www.ComputerBob.com/personal/computerbob_desk.php .
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by ComputerBob
March 7, 2006
Over the years, I've spent thousands of hours of my own time, creating and updating this Web site. I've also written articles, created college courses, developed training programs, crafted presentations and speeches, answered email messages, troubleshot computer problems for people all over the world, and much more. And I've done it all from ComputerBob Central Command -- my home office. In May of 2005, I decided to move my office from our dining room to our second bedroom. I went looking for a suitable desk, but I quickly discovered that office furniture stores wanted $275 (U.S.D) or more for a used, plain steel desk, and $350 or more for a used steel desk with a wooden desktop. I finally settled for a used wooden desk that I found at a local thrift shop for only $35. It wasn't designed or built very well and it was slightly bowed in the middle, but I used it for the past 10 months. Under the weight of my 21" monitor, scanner, and laser printer, it got really warped, causing my scanner and printer to increasingly lean toward my monitor, so I kept my eyes open for a suitable replacement.
This past Sunday night, I saw that a nearby church had put some furniture out by the road, to be taken away with the trash. There, among some chairs, a sofa, and a few cabinets, was a very large steel desk. I called my brother-in-law, Jim, and the two of us strained hard to load the massive desk into his pickup truck and then unload it into my garage. Its thick (1.25-inch) wooden desktop was 6-feet long and 3-feet deep, making it too big for my office, but I didn't care, because I had other plans for it.
Yesterday, I cut 5.5 inches off of each of the desktop's cantilevered sides, leaving only one-half inch on each side. I also cut 6 inches off of its cantilevered back, leaving 5 inches. Then I painted the cut edges black. I removed the desk's middle pencil drawer, then drilled out the rivets that fastened the drawer tracks and removed them. I removed the keyboard tray from my old desk, took it apart, cut 6 inches off of each side, painted its edges black, reassembled it, and mounted it where I had removed the middle drawer. Then I removed the pen and paperclip tray from inside the middle drawer, cut it, and mounted it inside the right-top drawer. Then came the hardest part -- dragging and pushing my new desk all the way through my house and into my office. At the end of the trip, I had to stand it up on one end and remove two of its legs to get it through my office's narrow doorway. The large file drawer on the bottom right is missing the tracks that allow it to slide in and out, so I'll have to figure out what to do about that, but for now I just won't use it. How strong is my new desk? While running cables to reconnect all of my computer hardware, I climbed up and knelt right in the middle of the desktop several times, but it never sagged or complained.
Below you can see the results of my work -- a strong, attractive desk that's worth at least a few hundred dollars (plus tax and delivery
charges), but all it cost me was one very hard day's work.
