Area Man Builds Stand-up Desk

I wanted to see what the furor over stand-up desks is about, but I didn’t want to throw a bunch of money after what could be a passing curiosity. So I built my own. I designed it, built parts of it some months back, and then went away for a while.

Truth is, the real engineer of my household threatened me that if I don’t design it up-front, I don’t get to build it. Designing up-front is not the way I’m used to doing things, so grumbled a bit, but followed her instructions anyway. (As if there was any other way…) This, unsurprisingly, turned out to be a good plan.

I used some free lumber from craigslist, and some lumber and plywood from one of the big-box hardware stores. I completed my stand-up desk yesterday.

There are many stand-up desks, but this one is mine!

My desk turned out to be just like the code I write: hacked up, follows a design in a somewhat loose manner, and somewhat wobbly. Unlike my code, it is usable for the most part.

I think I will call this Wobbly^TM beta.

To be fair to the desk and myself, it isn’t terribly wobbly; it just isn’t super sturdy: it jerks slightly when I push it. It however is strong enough to support my weight when I lean on it.

The reason the desk turned out slightly jerk-ey is simple: I’m clueless, and this is my first woodworking project (if you can call cutting wood and joining pieces using screws and a power drill-driver “woodworking”), and that I don’t know how to make precision cuts with a circular power saw (the only saw I have), and therefore I couldn’t make perfect joints.

I think I will apprentice with our friend Mike. (Mike has some kind of shop and had invited me to work with him at the shop a while back.)

I worked today all day on this desk. Appu cat came to sit on the desk, and had a brief face-off through the window glass with a squirrel that walked past us: Appu and the squirrel stared at each other for a full minute before the latter scampered away. Fortunately for the squirrel, the window was closed.

I think this is going to be another favorite perch for Appu cat and Ammu cat.