Well, the second great migration of the year is underway. Migration #1 was me moving my desks from the office on the second floor to the basement. Yes, I said desks. I’ll post pictures when everything is done (sorry Matt, you’ll have to wait), but basically I have a desk for my personal computer, monitor, scanner, label printer, etc. It’s a pretty full space, unfortunately. More on that later.
In addition, I have a second desk that has all my work stuff on it — tablet from work, two monitors from work, keyboard, mouse, etc. Plus a bunch of dead space with miscellaneous crap on it.
But it’s in a good L, and it’s not like the desk surface is small — both are old Ikea desks that are 30″x60″-ish. I say “old Ikea” because I knocked them apart long ago and replaced the heavy wooden and non-adjustable height sides and cross beams with simple adjustable height legs.
So it’s a decent amount of space. The L shape isn’t really working well for me, it’s just what I had available in the space I designed. But a casual conversation with Andrea a week or two ago led to some interesting thoughts bouncing around my head in the “What if … ” category. Like, for instance, “What if I put my desk right in that far corner where all that other stuff is? Where would it go? How could I go back to maximizing floor space while finding room for my desks?”.
The solution in part is to take a bunch of Jacob’s toys (mostly Lego), and move them into storage space along the wall in the old office and bring another desk down. Yeah, you heard me. Another old Ikea desk with the same size top. Two sides down, everything cannibalized, and in theory, I might actually have the space for my dream setup. A giant U with desk all the way around the end of my basement. Space for printers and scanners, space for my computers, space for storage underneath, and most important of all? Simple space to spread out a project, work on it, and not have to pick it all back up when I’m done for the day. A workspace to do things like a Lego build. Or taking apart a set of binoculars. Or even just sorting a whack of magazines (if it wasn’t already done) or books.
I could, in theory, end up with desk space the equivalent of 30″ deep by 15′ long. I think my nipples just got hard. Could just be the cold in the basement. Andrea’s flexibility with the office is making a bunch of it happen, as the toys needed to go somewhere at least until Jacob might decide he no longer wants to keep them.
Three pieces of other furniture left the basement today too — two white tables that Jacob used for a while for his train sets (very large coffee tables, that I did think about cannibalizing for the tops hehehe). And if they don’t sell, I may still cannibalize them for something in the garage I want to do at some point.
And the old TV stand we had in the basement, recently replaced with something taller.
In short, we moved a lot of stuff around today. I have a small snag that I’m working on, which is the legs I mentioned earlier. One desk has four legs on it, simple adjustable ones from Ikea. Easy to find, easy to install, easy-ish to adjust. But, for the U, I would prefer not to have legs in the middle of a long desk. I just end up whacking my knees on them. Instead, I would love a set of legs like I have on the other desk.
It has a wide base, and then only one leg coming up each end of the desk. More like an inverted T, it appeared. There was NOTHING like it on the Ikea website. But when I looked at the desk again tonight, I realized it is way more elaborate than I remember. It actually has cross beams running underneath for added support. That is a MUCH different design than I remember, and now I can’t even remember if this one ever HAD full sides. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe this is the support it always had. Well, pooh. Cuz I would LOVE two more. 🙂
I’m also trying to figure out what the space actually looks like when I put the desks in. I might, and this is just crazy talk, have a bit of room for corner squares to make a really complete U, leaving the desks almost as connectors. Or almost like getting another 5′ of space for things like scanners and printers to sit out of the way. Kind of like the angled corners you see for TV stands, ideally, or simply just blocking off the corner with a square 30″x30″. Which of course would require separate legs. If I can FIND the right ones that will work. I really don’t want the simple legs from Ikea.
Well, off to search. And to cross my fingers that my longer Ethernet cable arrives tomorrow. The new location is about 15′ farther than my current setup, and I’m going to need a bigger cable. But I’m optimistic everything will fit where it is supposed to in the end.
Today I choose to rearrange our office space to give me a potentially dream office layout. Yes, it is in the basement. Yes, it might be somewhat cold down here. But a shot at my dream functional space? That just might be worth it.
What choices are you making today?
