My friend Scott told me about this desk a while back and gave me permission to add it to the showcase. Here’s his description.
My father and I designed it to meet the following needs:
- Basic and sturdy
- Easily movable, not dependent upon being connected to a particular location or desk
- Unfinished wood so no off-gassing smells
- Adjustable heights
The layout works like this:
- Large box design that rests directly on a desk (not affixed to the underlying desk; easy to move but heavy enough so that it doesn’t shift around at all)
- Open back so that wires can easily be run in and out to different levels
- Bottom level for in-box and power strip behind in-box
- Middle shelf for docking station, laptop, and wireless trackball mouse; fully adjustable height to any height in the overall box and extra depth to stick out away from desk for feet below and to have laptop/keyboard out away from upper monitor shelf
- Upper shelf for monitor and speakerphone (plus headphones hanging on side for private conversations); fully adjustable to any height in the overall box
- The box is sturdy enough that I have shifted it out in the air partially over the right side of my regular desk, therefore increasing the overall usable space
I have a wireless keyboard but am currently using the laptop keyboard directly. I mostly use the upper monitor exclusively but have the laptop screen (usually off) below for the few situations where I would need a dual monitor. From my standing position at the keyboard the lower laptop screen is fully below the view of the entire upper monitor so there is no blocking/overlap (as may appear from these more distance view pictures). I prefer a trackball to a regular mouse, and find that it creates less strain around my wrists. I have found that standing at the workstation for long periods does create some muscle pain on one side of my lower back, so I alternate between stretches of sitting and standing. My personal laptop is on the sit-down desk to the left, work laptop is on the stand-up workstation, and the work laptop wires are set up so that they can all directly drop (still connected) from the stand-up station to the sit-down desk after just popping the laptop out of the docking station, still continuously connected.
View showing both sitting and standing stations.
Price to build: $10