Building a very small desk.

[brooksmoses]

I've been thinking about building a desk for the last few months. When I set up my workspace in this apartment last year, I ended up building an L-shaped arrangement out of my desk, a desk-sized table (actually, I think technically it's a desk too, but it looks more like a table), and some spare shelves piled on boxes. It turns out that this works really well, except for the fact that the part of it that's boards and boxes doesn't really look very good. And so I've been thinking of making a proper piece of furniture that takes their place, but has roughly the same shape and size.

The important characteristics of the pile of boxes are that it has a platform that's about 20" off the ground -- about level with my chair seat, though a little higher would be ok -- that's a bit over two feet deep and about three and a half feet wide. This is functionally divided into thirds the long way; on the back third is a row of books accessible from the back side, then a row of books that I can reach from my chair, and then a flat mostly-empty surface for temporarily piling things. And then there's another shelf, just a couple of inches above normal desk height, that goes above the two rows of books. Oh, and my computer fits underneath -- it's actually supporting one end of the platform with the books on it.

For the last couple of months, I've been trying to figure out how to design a piece of furniture that does the same thing but also makes better use of the space below the book-platform. I'm thinking that I want the entire back to be bookshelves, but that is a bit of a problem because there's not really room for more than one row of books under the platform as it is now, unless I raise it quite a lot, and then I think the upper shelf may be too high. And there are a few other similar things where making it into a real piece of furniture means that things won't fit quite the same way. So it's been a bit of a challenge to figure out, and it's also complicated enough that I've been having a bit of trouble visualizing what the various possibilities would look like, even with sketches.

Thus, I decided to build some models, and started on that today at mikz's Projects Night Afternoon. I'm building them out of some cardboard that the local art supply store calls "utility board" (it's about like a cheap mat-board, though not as pretty-colored), held together with plain old Elmer's white glue. It's been a long time since I've used this stuff, and I'd remembered it as being okay but not remarkable for holding construction paper together for grade school projects, but was a little dubious about whether or not it would be strong enough for heavier work, and also whether or not it would dry too slow to be annoying. Turns out that I needn't have worried; if squeezed tightly, it dries strong enough to rip the cardboard in a couple of minutes, and the built model is startlingly solid.

So, I finished the first one today. I'm not sure how much I like it; it would certainly work, but I'm not completely happy with some of the design compromises. Which is, I suppose, the point -- much better to try this with three dollars worth of cardstock and glue and an afternoon, rather than a hundred dollars worth of oak and dozens of hours building a real one!

A couple of pictures:





That's at 1:8 scale, by the way, so 1.5 inches on the model to one foot in reality. So it's a bit under four inches high, just over three inches wide, and six inches long. The computer goes behind the cabinet in the middle, and there's room for a ventilation system for it that takes air in from over the books on one side and vents it on the other side; with decent sound insulation, it should be nearly silent.

Comments

[nitoda]

Hmmm - is the idea that the keyboard will fit on the lower section of desk and the monitor on the higher section? This would not work for me, nor for anyone I know who wears varifocal lenses where the reading part of the lens is in the lower area and one needs to be able to look *down* onto a screen in order to read it. This may or may not be an issue for you for the foreseeable future however. :-)

[brooksmoses]

It's actually more of a "second desk", and the monitor goes on the first desk. (The keyboard usually ends up in my lap if I'm doing any serious typing.) Also, the bi-level nature of it makes it look taller than it is; the lower level is about level with my knees when I'm sitting in the chair, and the upper level is at a normal desk height -- so a monitor sitting on it would have the top about level with my eyes.

[okoshun.livejournal.com]

That's very cool! I've been thinking about attmepting to build some projects and this would be a good way to test things out before I actually start building them. Hmm.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

spiffy model!

is there enough legroom, or are you not planning to sit in the middle?

[brooksmoses]

Not planning to sit in the middle -- it's too low, as well as being only six inches deep.

Even with my main desk (which this will be an adjunct to, not a replacement for), I tend to sit in front of the desk instead of under it.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I feel like this will mark me as a squeeing fanboy, but: OMG that is SO COOL!!!!

I don't make physical objects much, if at all, so you'll have to forgive my fascination with people who do. I think that's totally incredible, though.

For me, the biggest problem with be a lack of leg space under the middle of the desk, assuming you sit at it that way.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, I love the tiny handles.

[brooksmoses]

*grin*

I needed to add them so that I could see that space as "doors" rather than just flat rectangles, particularly since they're just scribed lines on a single piece of cardboard.

(On the legroom -- it's a desk for sitting beside, not under, so that's not a problem in my case.)

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

If those skinny shelves on the front are going to serve as flat temporary storage, you might want more than two shelves on each side. If they're going to be for books, adjustable shelves might be nice, so that as the book heights vary so can the shelves. (I am an adjustable-shelf junkie.)

What are the inner borders around the sides for? Strictly decorative, or do they serve a structural purpose?

Does the cabinet bit have shelves? What other than the computer would go in there?

[brooksmoses]

All the shelves are for books; I hadn't planned to make them adjustable mainly because the overall height is as short as it can be and still have room for two shelves that will fit hardcover engineering books (which are pretty reliably 10" or 11" tall), so adjusting the shelf would mean one or the other of the shelves is not useful for much.

It's actually a bit smaller than it looks -- one of the things this model demonstrated is that there may not be space to put quite all the things I want to. The front shelves are only about seven inches wide, which is only just a small handful of books -- so the idea of making them wide enough for flat paper storage (and making them adjustable) might be a good one.

The cabinet itself is actually only really big enough to fit the computer and have enough room around it for airflow. I'd thought it would be bigger than that, but it turns out not to be.