Be Excellent To Each Other

OK so here is what I have planned. Basically the desk needs to be 240cm wide.

The reason it needs to be that size is the ammount of hardware going on it. From left to right -

Alienware (silver) - 22" TFT - 23" TFT - Alienware (black).

In front of each monitor needs to sit a keyboard and I want a collapsable swing up plate to hold my steering wheel that will come up in front of the keyboard that sits in front of the black monitor.

My plan is this. Basically take two kitchen base cabinets from Ikea's FAKTUM range and use those at each end with a braced 3/4" MDF top.

So if you can, visualise this. One of these on the left side in the corner at left wall.



Then a nice big deep top and at the other end one of these



Now remember, these things are flat packed and you can hang the doors either way around. So, the larger left side cabinet will be hinged left and the smaller right side cabinet will be hinged right.

The two of those cost £60 (one is £32 the other one £28). They are designed to stand 86cm high which is too high. However, see the chrome post legs? I shall just chop them down to about 1/2" tall which will bring the top surface down enough to meet desk height.

Then its a simple case of cutting a top and vertical support for it, using a drill and holesaw to drill the routing holes and painting the top with a roller using hammerite or smoothrite or something uber durable.

Job done. TBH? I doubt it will even cost £100. What's a sheet of 8x4ft MDF cost these days? and surely the hammerite is no more than a tenner? I reakon more like £90. And that'll be one hell of a desk with a shit load of storage for £90.

And Chinny. To answer your question without it turning into an "I like Alienware/mac" (delete as applicable) I would never leave a PC on the floor ever. They're dust vaccuums. They also need to be accessible for me to work on.

What are you bracing the worktop with?

Also, this needs more LEDs. I'm not even taking the piss!

MDF. basically there will be a large 3/4" top surface and then I will cut an 8" strip and screw it to the top. This piece will also screw into the sides of the two end cabinets to give the desk top support. I'll knock up a pic in a min.

Got it.

Do a sketchup model for bonus points

If you won't admit the real reason the PC is on the desktop is because you want to spunk all over it, fine. The rest of us know different.

Just buy a display cabinet and have done with it. But if you are going to bang on about not having enough room on your desk, being short of cash and needing something bigger please don't expect me to do anything other than point and laugh, especially when you can pick up huge desks for next to nothing from office clearance places, auctions or even Ebay.

Yeah here goes. Basically like this. Larger of the cabinets left side end, smaller on the right. These can be bracketted to the wall. then a nice deep top surface and a vertical support that goes between the cabinets (screwed and fixed into the carcass sides).

Feet cut down to achieve optimum height which is anywhere between 68 and 79 cm for me.

But as you can see, it will simply look like an 'over the counter' desk you can already buy. Only much fucking larger

I'd never find a desk that would fit the space I want to fill perfectly. I would also never find a desk with two large storage cupboards for less than £90. Seriously have you shopped around for large desks? they cost a ruddy fortune !!

Bleurgh! Sketchup it!




Second hand. Clearance centres. Even freecycle.
If you want to build your own that's cool, but you can't pretend it's to save money

How deep is it going to be, JC?

Here. The desk needs to be this big. It needs to go accross the space that is currently taken by a speaker, coffee table, workstation and chest of drawers. I want it to fill the entire space, hence why I'm going to have to make one

Edit. And I will get the added bonus of putting the amp in the larger of the two cabinets.

I don't know yet mate. I don't want to have to use keyboard drawers I would rather have them on the desk itself, so pretty deep. The Alienwares are 65cm deep and need a good 8" of rear clearance so they can breathe. so I reakon at least 86cm.

Yes, I fucking have! This is why you are making me so very angry. Bleating you have no cash and then flooding the forum with a load of shit about a desk that you can't afford.

I have the biggest desk in my office you can imagine. A huge thing I picked up on Ebay for about 30 quid and then had delivered. Do not tell me there are no large cheap desks available when you patently spent less time looking for one than bleating on the forum about it. Abit less posting and abit more actual looking might help.

Now granted Ebay doesn't have the selection these days, but here's a wild suggestion, how about trying Freecycle for starters?

Have you considered a corner unit instead? You get loads of depth then and they look nicer.

Fuck me who pissed in your cheerios today? Seriously man stop being so aggressive !

It's Saturday, Spurs don't play til gone 5 and I'm bored. So I'm simply thinking out loud.

What the fuck's freecycle? Never heard of it man.

Post of the week!

I can consider it yeah. Don't take all this as gospel it'll be a month before I go ahead and do anything and knowing me the plans will change a million times.

No, that is

OMFGWTF?!!!

and relax.

I am relaxed. And no, I have never heard of it. I came from the USA and have been back two years. I hadn't been here for a decade and since then I live in the country near the seaside and don't get out much.

I can't 'do' sketchup apparently.

I don't have Max installed on this PC.

Sorry

To elaborate: Freecycle http://www.freecycle.org/ is a set of yahoo mailing lists which allows exchange of goods *for free*. Basically, if you've got shit to get rid of (I've given away a couple of TVs, a fridge, a hifi, some furniture recently), you post it on there. If you want stuff, you watch the list and when something comes up that you need you hope you get your mail in quickly enough to request it. I've had a couple of sky boxes, a washing machine and other stuff. You can also send a "wanted" message but that's less likely to be successful.

Freecycle was the original network started in the US, at least 10 years ago. Just recently, the UK local lists got fucked off with the US people interfering and branched off to form independent lists which may complicate things a bit: you're looking for "freegle" http://www.ilovefreegle.org/ and "Recycle" http://www.recycle.co.uk/ for your area as well.

Go ahead, have a look.

Thanks Kalmar I will look into it.

I should point out that it's for my bedroom. So, to that ends what it looks like is pretty important. Which pretty much rules out an ugly old table.

What's going on? Front page says last post by Kalmar, but I see a JC post last.

I tried to edit and managed to delete the post Bit odd it still had my name up though.

What's wrong with the man building his own desk? Maybe he doesn't want somebody else's massive spunk-riddled* second hand desk. LEAVE COFFEY ALONE!

*Assumption based on personal experience.

we were trying to ignore Chinny's post red bull rant actually, but yeah, if JC's got the chippy chops, live and let live, I say

Well, until he nexts posts complaining of having no money anyway

MDF comes in 8'x4' sheets. You'll need 18mm. http://www.diy.com for a yardstick on price.
Check your bedroom carefully before putting a wall length desk nearly 3' deep in. That will take a metric fuckton of space. It'll also be very bloody heavy

MDF is very absorbent so you'll need to prime it first before painting it. It'll need several coats to look decent and I don't think hammerite will be the best paint, YMMV.

Another alternative is to buy a firedoor. They're about 6'8" tall and 3' wide and very solid. They're not eyewateringly expensive either - you can get one for about £40

Don't forget to sand the leading edges or you'll regret it later when it's gouging chunks out of your arms or thighs.

Gumtree's worth a squint too. It tends to focus on cities but you occasionally find stuff in nearby towns if you can get to/from a city easily.

Craigslist might be worth a look while you're at it, but I've yet to find anything useful on there.

I said I was a bit short of cash when you got the DS, not "Please sir, can I have some more?"

I brought an SSD before Xmas. Then I got the monitor. All was fine until I had my pseudo heart attack and ended up buying a new bed. That's what's done it, paying my family back for that whilst still paying all the bills etc. I have like one week left before everything is paid off and I am back in the +




DB.

Yeah MDF can be your best friend or your worst enemy. It's hilarious what it does if you leave it in the rain. Tampon any one?

I remember years ago I had a 18" Stroker (Cerwin Vega sub). It had a flashpoint of about 4kw so needed an uber box. I ended up building the cabinet with 1" MDF then painting the inside with Noisekiller. IIRC there was a sheet and a half of 1". Man, that thing weighed SO MUCH it was a joke. Then when I took the woofer out of it I put it in the garden. Dang, it soaked up water and was so heavy we could no longer move it. So I had to borrow a trolley jack from my friend and literally jack it apart to break it up. That wood glue is really amazingly strong stuff hehe.

My brother is a carpenter (fully qualified) so I have access to some pretty sexy tools. He retired from the physical side a couple of years ago (37 but has arthritus in his ankles) and now teaches at Epsom college so his tools are free most of the time.

I'm going to curve the front edge ever so slightly. What I'll do is get some 1/2 pine baton and screw down one end, bow it in and screw down the other end and use the curve for my facia. Then I'll hit the edges with a 1" belt sander.

I know the desk is going to be big and will eat space, but tbh the space gained by the cupboards will allow me to get rid of the book shelves in here once and for all and make it all look far less cluttered. TBH? I'll be using the same ammount of floor space I have now only everything will be uber tidy and I will have both machines set up side by side.

FNARRRR !

Good luck with the desk. I made mine and it's most excellent. Although I used right angled brackets to support it at one end attached to the wall, the other end is held up with a chock on a slope and there's some struts about half way to stop sag. It hasn't fallen down yet. The wood used on the top was about £50, it's pine, the circular saw to lop 2 inches from the end was £20 (needed to be done as otherwise it would have been to high for MrsA. Brackets were much cheapness from somewhere and struts were made from my "spare wood" in the garage.

I hope you do make the desk JC, I would interested to hear how you are getting on with it! I think it's a great idea. It gives you a project which is always fun (Jen has caught me having a look at model making kits recently and gives me a look which apears to be asking how much geekier I can get ) plus there must be a great sense of satisfaction once completing something like that. I moan about having no money all the time but I still somehow manage to buy all the xbox games that I do. If you decide to go ahead with it be sure to keep us updated

I want to Gill !

I would much rather have something bespoke and tailored to fit in here that have to move things around to fit. At least if I build it myself I can use the optimum available space.

That's the bloody thing with these modern open plan houses. There's nowhere to actually put anything.

I need storage so that I can get rid of my book shelves as they're nothing but a place for dust to collect. Horrid bloody things !!

My desk is hand crafted (they say he made it himself), using legs and wood (from a bigger desk) to fit in the oddly shaped wall I have in my cupboard.

I remember seeing in the trendy "homes" supplement of the weekend Guardian, a picture of a very rudimentary desk, it was a door resting on a couple of stacks of breeze blocks, with a simple light shade hanging on a wire above it, and an obligatory mac laptop on top.

"Nice" I thought, "an article on how to make useful stuff out of free stuff and what you have lying about". A refreshing change.
And then I read the article, which described selecting the SOLID OAK DOOR from a trendy interior design shop, purchasing the breeze blocks at Harrods (I exaggerate but only slightly) and the tacky lampshade was obviously a one-off designer model, and not from a charity shop sale like you thought.. Price excluding the mac, north of 500 quid.

I did a LOL.

edit: This was *just* before the Credit Crunch.

Well I am definitely going to be doing this now. I did some calculations and I should have Alienware 2 finished in about 2-3 weeks. Once done I am going to need the desk pronto. So I reakon about a month and I'll be G2G.

It's you that fills the weekend magazine of the Grauniad with those letters, isn't it?

Mea culpa.

Heh. Images of MaliA's Desk of Champions to follow.

If I get a minute tomorrow, I'll mock up a, er mock up in max for you, jc

Thanks Dave !

Well I ordered a CPU tonight for a whopping £28. So the PC should be done pretty soon

Just need some memory now.

Please, excuse the fact that it's a fucking state and a half, I've been very busy recently.

Bonus points for correctly identifying the book to the left of the monitor on the desk.

Blurry vision by Blur Mcblur?

Hey, it's a new camera and not mine and it appears to not do "point and click". It took me ages to work out how to make the flash work.

Ok JC, here it is. I haven't bothered doing much detail but going on the dimensions you gave me, it'll look a fair bit like this. Maybe a bit lower as I havent shortened the feet.

Nice!
Desktop looks thicker than 3/4" though..

Yep. Hang on