A working home office remodel

As I worked I made sure to keep things in alignment both with the cabinet doors and other drawers the best I could.

I used a scrap piece of luan and a couple small stacks of business cards as shims to set the gaps just where I wanted them.

As I worked, I also went ahead and started with the drawer pulls and knobs. The drawer pulls I bought have a 3" spacing between the two mounting holes and would be easy to get wrong. I figured worst case as long as I got one of the two holes exactly where I wanted, I could always make the second hole a little oversized in order to get the screws lined up with the holes in the pull and to get the pull level. I made a template and managed to get everything good enough one the first try and didn't need to resort to any over sized holes.

The drawer pictured and its twin on the other side of the giant printer cabinet have the same vertical dimension as the four smaller drawers for the desk. The desk drawers are narrower since those are 18" cabinets instead of 21" cabinets, so I made my template so if would fit in the drawer front recessed panel on the narrower drawers. For the 21" drawers all I had to was to mark the drawer centerline and match it up with the centerline mark on my template.

Here is the first pull I installed:

I figured out where I wanted the cabinet knobs to go and used a corner of the same template to mark those holes.

Now it came down to the 6 desk drawers. Remember these guys have 8" wide drawer boxes and 16" wide drawer fronts with the boxes being offset to one side to allow the hidden desk legs to fit inside the cabinets.

The drawer front mounting was a bit interesting. The top drawers have a 6" tall front, the middle drawers have the same size box, but 6 1/2" tall fronts and then the bottom drawers are 13" tall fronts. I had to pick and choose carefully to make sure the screws from the drawer boxes did not go into the center recessed panel of the drawer fronts since they would poke through the front finished surface. The desk drawers have Blum tandem with Blumotion drawer slides and these are really nice in terms of installation and adjustability. I was able to fine tune the drawers to get them all into alignment including one drawer that I put the drawer front on a bit crooked. In retrospect, I wish I would've splurged and used these type of drawer slides for the file cabinet drawers and the other two drawers.

Not sure what else to post about this. I guess I left off that used my router to round over the counter top edges to create a bullnose edge on the fronts and exposed ends. The beech was easy to machine and the routing went off with out issue. The desk controller has an up and down button as well as 4 memory preset positions. I set memory #1 to be the desk all the way down on top of the cabinets but with the desk legs still providing some support so they are not hanging from the underside of the desk. I elected to not attached the bottom of the desk legs to the bottoms of the cabinets. It doesn't seem necessary, although that means that when the desk is up I have to be aware that if I grab it and push/pull I can move it a bit and have to watch it on the way down to make sure it is in place. Since I don't typically push/pull on my desk I don't see this as a problem and it hasn't been an issue so far. I've been working in my new office for a few weeks now and I love how it turned out. Strangely, it is the room in the house that I like the best and it is the one room that pretty much nobody ever sees. The house has an odd floorplan where my office if connected to my bedroom via part of my master bathroom and connected to my son's bedroom through his bathroom. It is a private space that unless I am giving a guest the nickel tour they don't have any reason to go to. Maybe someday I'll remodel the kitchen to make it as nice.

In the end the desk drawers were finished with out issue.

That is outstanding. I really like the colors.

How would you like to come replace my kitchen cabinets.

Now the only thing left was to tackle the giant printer. I toyed with idea of the soft close mixer lift as a birthday present or maybe even a Father's Day present, but then decided that there was no real reason that the printer needed to come up to counter height. If I installed a roll out shelf with full extension drawer slides I would be able to access the printer easily enough, especially if I just rolled the four or five feet over to it on my desk chair.

The 30" cabinet came with two shelves and I decided to use them to make roll out shelves. This issue (isn't there always an issue?) was that the shelves of course were too wide to roll out (that was expected) but they were also not as deep as the cabinet. The cabinet is 24" deep (that's outside depth, inside is less) and the shelves were only 18" deep. I figured I'd make two roll out shelves. The printer would go on top and it had to be low enough so it would clear the top of the face frame. The bottom one would not have much height and I figured if it didn't also slide out it would be fairly useless since anything in there unless right in the front would be hard to reach.

I didn't have much of a plan as I started building. I bought two pairs of 22" long full extension soft closing drawer slides from Amazon and figured I could figure out the details as I went. I took the first shelf down to the garage and had at it. I knew I wanted the shelf to have a small lip around it and based on the drawer slides I figured the sides should be at least 2" tall. I had a 2x4 stud in my scrap wood pile, so that is what I used to make the sides back and front for the drawer.

I ended up with this:

The plywood shelf sat in dados in the sides and back pieces and then I made a lower piece for the front.

I liked how this came out but before I applied any finish to the 2x4 parts, I tool it up to the office for a test fit. It seemed like it was going to work perfectly so I did a little sanding, slapped on some poly urethane and went to install the slides. What I later realized that since I started with an 18" deep piece of plywood my printer would not quite fit on the shelf. I made it so the sides extended to the rear past the plywood shelf since I had 22" drawer slides, I needed the sides to be 21" long. I didn't want the printer hanging off the front of my shelf and even worse, since the shelf did not go all the way to the back of the cabinet it was not going to work for the giant printer, at least if I wanted the cabinet doors to close.

All was not lost as I figured I would make this the bottom shelf and use the second piece of plywood to make another shelf for the printer. I wanted the bottom shelf basically sitting on the bottom of the cabinet and that meant that the drawer slides were interfering with the cabinet door hinges. I had enough time into this shelf at this point and had already glued and pinned it all together that I didn't want to take it apart and start over, so I cut rabbits in the sides to allow the drawer slides to clear the hinges.

Test fitting convinced me that this was going to work ok for the bottom shelf and it set the dimension I needed for the cleats (not sure what the actual name is for these, but that's what I called them in my head) that I needed to install inside the cabinet to provide a surface to mount the drawer slides since I have face frame cabinets. I ended up using some scraps of butcherblock since I needed an inch. I glued and screwed these to the cabinet sides and installed for vertically.

For the printer shelf, I was determined to make it deeper and still utilize the plywood shelf that I already had on hand. This is what I came up with: I used more 2x4 from my scrap pile and cut it down to match the thickness of the plywood and used it to extend the depth of the shelf. The piece on the bottom is the 2x4. It matches pretty well with the shelf and cannot be seen now that the giant printer is on top of it. It is fairly invisible from some angles like this one: I cut a 2x4 in half to make two 1x4 pieces (ok, so they are really 3/4" by 1 3/4" or whatever a 2x4 sliced in half comes out to be.) and used a little strip for the front edge.

I applied poly urethane to whole deal.

Here are the shelves installed: And with the giant printer: I'm using the lower shelf to hold letter and 11x17 paper for the printer as well as a backup ink cartridge for it. It rolls in and out easily and I am happy with it. I wasn't sure if it would get too hot in there, but it turns itself off into a power saving mode when not in use and I can feel no temperature difference inside the cabinet compared to the room temperature when I open it up.

Here is an overall shot of the completed project: And here it is with the desk raised to the standing position:

Here are a couple shots of the hinged counter top: And with it opened:

I didn't bother making a dust top for this cabinet since I don't plan on opening the lid very often. I considered hinges that would hold the lid open, but figured against that as well since I don't plan on needing to open it much. I did stick some stuff down in one of the compartments figuring it was a good place to store stuff that would be out of the way and not easily found by anyone who happened to be looking.

All the photos I took are in my Photobucket account here. There are additional pictures if anyone wants to look through them all.

I"m pretty curious as to what you do at home?

sounds like autocad design. Private firm? So rare to be a designer and be allowed to work from home.

Love your height adjustable desk and the overall layout.

In reply to Mad_Ratel:

Thanks. I work as an electrical engineer for a small company. I do design work for modifications to nuclear power plants.

I've got a decent sized remnant of butcher block that is about 2'x'2 that I need to come up with a use for. Not sure yet what I will use it for. Since I completed the office project I realized that I spent every minute of every weekend working on this for a couple months. I started my jet ski lift project which I need to finish up because I just picked up my new jet ski yesterday.

T.J. wrote: In reply to Mad_Ratel: Thanks. I work as an electrical engineer for a small company. I do design work for modifications to nuclear power plants.

Nice, I'm a Piping Engineer for a large company, they'd have a heart attack at me "working from home"... :P

I'd love to WFH and do design work. Trying to get started doing some Train Engine stuff for a small local company right now. Will see where it goes.

(I also recently interviewed with CBI in Charlotte to do Natural Gas conversions for coal plants.)

I have to reiterate, I LOVE how your office came out. It looks like a clean neat efficient place to work that is also relaxing and not taxing.

Stunning. Bravo! I wish I had 1% of the capabilities you do!

Totally Awesome. I love the result too. Now to see if I can make my own desk stand like that... Love how the desk support legs go through the cabinets and stay out of view.

Here's the chair I recently made for my office, might give you some ideas for the future:

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/build-projects-and-project-cars/one-post-build-bmw-7-series-office-chair/108124/page1/

Thanks all. Robbie, I do have a pair of Corbeau seats I retired from my Mini. One is too narrow for anyone with more than a 28" waist and in great shape. The other one is wide enough to fit my butt in but would need some foam and cover repairs. I figure someday I'll use it for my playstation driving rig that I never get around to building....you know the one that I bought the steering wheel for about 4 years ago, but have never used.

T.J. wrote: I knew from reading about the ergonomic aspects of standing desks that my monitors were too low. I figured I needed to raise them 4-5 inches or so. I didn't really want to block my view out the window because I like to be distracted by watching the boats go by. At first I set the monitors on packages of contractor shims I had leftover and thought it was better to have them higher both sitting and standing. I was going to spend money to get a fancy dual monitor arm, but by this time between the floor, the cabinets, the desk legs, the counter tops, etc. I really did not want to spend more money. I still had to buy drawer and cabinet pulls. So, I ended up spending $6 on six cheap doorstops at Lowes and used two pieced of scrap counter cutoff to make this: Before I was sure whether or not I could pull off the hinged counter top, I bought a few of those countertop miter bolts that are used to joint counter tops togther. I used two of them to join two pieces of scrap together to get a piece long enough for what I needed.

I just wanted to tell you that this is genius. As said above, I love the details and am glad you've included as many as you have. It's really nice to see a good office come together.

In reply to Kylini:

When I was considering using these counter tops I did a little test at the Tampa Ikea using one their little golf pencils and scorecards. I was concern that the wood would not be a good surface for writing on without making indentations. I tested out my theory on one of their display kitchens and found that the Beech is fairly dent resistant to being indented by a pencil writing on paper. I had to push down really hard to create anything at all on the counter. So that made me confident in the durability of the wood surface, however eventhough I do a lot of typing and only a little writing, I didn't want to have to worry about marking up my desk top when I needed to jot something down. When I am in a hurry I tend to write with a lot of pressure. I started looking at desk blotters and figured a desk calendar was a cheap and easy way to go. I like to use it for little notes and reminders. The page tends to no get too full before the month changes. Today when I put May into the recycling bin there were only two notes I ended up transferring onto the June page. The doorstops in the center were placed to allow my calendar to fit on the desk. It extends a few inches under the monitor riser. I think the desk calendar was like $7, so only slightly more than my six cheap doorstops.

For a project I am working on, there are a good number of drawings and it is not always conveinient to look at them on a computer monitor. I ended up printing out a set of drawings on 18"x24" paper, which is large enough to see everything clearly but not nearly as hard to handle as 36"x48" drawings. I needed to come up with a rack to hold the drawing sticks. I looked online and decided to build my own. I had some scrap 1"x2" poplar boards and some Harbor Freight casters. I just bought a piece of aluminum channel from Lowes and here is what I ended up with. Just some simple half lap joints and some wood glue. Here it is during a test fit of a drawing stick. And here it is doing its job.

I've been using this thing for about 6 months now and I am happy with it. I bought a cheap table on Amazon to use as a drawing table. Not for actual drawing, but for looking at drawings or making notes or annotations on them. The table has an adjustable angle so it can also be placed flat and made a good surface to build my 3d printer.

Other than the speakers I built, the office is pretty much the same as it was last year. Just figured I'd make a post to update this thread.

That hinged countertop is super cool.