Background

During my years in college, I have used my share of desks, from the fold-able picnic tables to kitchen tables to cheap tables geared toward college students and none of them seemed quite right to my needs. As an engineer-to-be at the time, I also believe there is a solution to every problem and would not settle for anything less than perfect. I found the diy community and this is how I started my journey for a perfect desk.

My very first DIY desk is just a long plywood on top of two shelves :). The table top is not secured, it moves around quite a bit.

Few months later I got a few more plywoods, have the staff in the home improvement store cut them to size, painted them, put a few screws in, and butt join them all together. The result? a desk that looks somehow better but still kinda wobbly, especially when I am using an eraser. The whole desk moves with the stuff on top of it, and it is quite scary.

What I like about that desk though, is that it is very easy to transport. Simply unscrew the joints and you are back to just basic plywood boards. This feature helps me quite a lot when I am moving.

After experimenting with different desks (and two of my 'designs'), and now with a job that has some disposable income, as well as after referencing some desk designs that I think is 'cool', I started listing some of the features I would like to see on my 'perfect' desk design.

Features i want my desk to have

• Sturdy.
• Easy to assemble/disassemble.
• Easy to carry/move.
• Have storage spaces.
• Wire management built in. (I.e. NO exposed wires!)
• Consolidated power sources.
• Only one detachable power cord to the wall.
• Charges my gadgets.
• Wide.
• Deep enough to still have spaces for papers/books once the monitor takes some depth away.
• Houses two computers.
• Have switches to control the two computers on the desk top and they have to be within arms reach.
• Quiet, since there will be two computers built into the desk, I would love that the desk would be as quiet as possible so not to annoy me when I am working.

Note about the sturdy and easy to carry requirement. My roommate was once given an office desk which the donor described it as "tornado proof". It didn't disappoint to the description, but surely it's heavy and hard to move around. It eventually ended up in the dumpster during the next move. I loved that desk, but I wished that it could be easily carried around.

Design

Standing on the shoulders of giants, I drew my ideas from these great designs:

Ana White's modular office desk

Red Harbinger's Cross Desk

l3p d3sk

Project KAPROS

Loren's Computer Desk

The Next Level by Paslis

So I started to design away with SketchUp. It took me about a year to finalize the design. I am definitely not in a hurry!