Inspiring, efficient, and attractive office spaces!

[zovc]

Hey!

(I did a pretty light search just now and didn't see any threads like this, but I feel like the terms 'office' and 'space' that I used might be too broad to find if there was something out there.)

So I'm tidying up my office environment at home (and my work 'office' might be getting some overhauls, too!) and I'm definitely no interior design specialist. I'm like the opposite of an interior design specialist, or like a renowned innovative designer who channels the spirit of a 20-something who "doesn't care" about traditional things like "tidiness" or "keeping boxes and wires off of the floor." I'm just on another level!

... I might have gotten a little sidetracked.

So I'm tidying up m office environment at home and I'm trying to find ideas and inspiration for ways to not only make my workspace more tidy and attractive, but also more efficient and comfortable. A lot of folks like different kinds of things, and a lot of spaces people put on pedestals aren't necessarily practical for a DIY/low-budget person like myself. This thread is meant to be a place for people to share ideas and advice for improving our real-world workspaces, whether we want to show off our awesome, tiny SFF PC's and how little desk space they use or if we want to show off how modern and clean our TV can look while still having a computer connected to it!

I'll post some of my own questions and thoughts later... and looking at how much stuff costs, I'd definitely appreciate suggestions on how to save a buck here or there.

 

[zovc]

I ended up not going to IKEA today, I got the clearance to borrow a van from work but just couldn't motivate myself to go through with it. I live in Louisiana and the closest one is ~5 hours away in Houston.

The main reason I ended up losing heart is because the price difference between what IKEA offered and some stuff on Amazon wasn't that great. (Not great enough to justify 10 hours round trip and paying for gas) I decided to give this desk a shot. Choosing between black and white was hard, but I settled on black. It's got good reviews, and it's supposed to show up March 23-28. So either late this week or next week.

So, the main reasons I picked black are:

• I think it'll be easier to manage cables thanks to the 'camouflage' factor.
• My office is currently almost entirely white, it's got white walls, white molding on the floor/ceiling, white ceiling, white windowseals and blinds... The floor and my possessions are the only things that aren't white besides the 'wood' flooring.

I honestly think the white would have looked better besides that. That said, I'm considering either painting the top of the desk white or covering it with some sort of wrap, there are some cool patterns out there.

Similar to the desk, I'm considering dressing the place up with some sort of inexpensive wallpaper (or vinyl), this is a relatively inexpensive brick one that is supposedly hard to perfectly line up, but some folks seem to have done a good job. I think that would add a lot more dimension and inoffensive color to my office space, the plan in my head is to cover two walls.

I liked this desk, too, and probably would have tried it first over the other one, but it doesn't adjust as high up. I'm 6'0", for whatever that's worth, and you can see this desk says it's meant for people up to 5'9". The main reason I liked this desk's design more, aside from having wheels, is the sort of 'shelf' design. I feel like it would be really easy to cut some slots/holes for subtle cable management and the raised part of the shelf would be a good place to either put trays for cables or even to mount power strips and whatnot.

 

[Phuncz]

Interesting topic. I want to do my own desk when I move, since I haven't been able to find a desk that matches my desires and doesn't cost well over $1000. But I'm still mulling the materials and design. I was also looking at a standing desk for me it's more important that I have a very solid table that's 2.0 to 2.5m wide with no feet in between.

I'm also going to incorporate some kind of cable and power supply management at the rear just below the surface, because it will most likely be a free-standing desk, not facing a wall. I also like to have a solid mount for two (seperate) screens, along with stands to raise my speakers to ear level. Another thing I'm craving is multiple hide-away power sockets and preferably a few USB 5V @ 2A too.

 

[LocoMoto]

Interesting topic. I want to do my own desk when I move, since I haven't been able to find a desk that matches my desires and doesn't cost well over But I'm still mulling the materials and design. I was also looking at a standing desk for me it's more important that I have a very solid table that's 2.0 to 2.5m wide with no feet in between.

I'm also going to incorporate some kind of cable and power supply management at the rear just below the surface, because it will most likely be a free-standing desk, not facing a wall. I also like to have a solid mount for two (seperate) screens, along with stands to raise my speakers to ear level. Another thing I'm craving is multiple hide-away power sockets and preferably a few USB 5V @ 2A too.

Wow, recognize a lot of these ideas, an integrated desk setup solution is a happy solution!

I ended up not going to IKEA today, I got the clearance to borrow a van from work but just couldn't motivate myself to go through with it. I live in Louisiana and the closest one is ~5 hours away in Houston.

The main reason I ended up losing heart is because the price difference between what IKEA offered and some stuff on Amazon wasn't that great. (Not great enough to justify 10 hours round trip and paying for gas) I decided to give this desk a shot. Choosing between black and white was hard, but I settled on black. It's got good reviews, and it's supposed to show up March 23-28. So either late this week or next week.

So, the main reasons I picked black are:

• I think it'll be easier to manage cables thanks to the 'camouflage' factor.
• My office is currently almost entirely white, it's got white walls, white molding on the floor/ceiling, white ceiling, white windowseals and blinds... The floor and my possessions are the only things that aren't white besides the 'wood' flooring.

I honestly think the white would have looked better besides that. That said, I'm considering either painting the top of the desk white or covering it with some sort of wrap, there are some cool patterns out there.

Similar to the desk, I'm considering dressing the place up with some sort of inexpensive wallpaper (or vinyl), this is a relatively inexpensive brick one that is supposedly hard to perfectly line up, but some folks seem to have done a good job. I think that would add a lot more dimension and inoffensive color to my office space, the plan in my head is to cover two walls.

I liked this desk, too, and probably would have tried it first over the other one, but it doesn't adjust as high up. I'm 6'0", for whatever that's worth, and you can see this desk says it's meant for people up to 5'9". The main reason I liked this desk's design more, aside from having wheels, is the sort of 'shelf' design. I feel like it would be really easy to cut some slots/holes for subtle cable management and the raised part of the shelf would be a good place to either put trays for cables or even to mount power strips and whatnot.

Will respond more extensively later, but for now... Dimensions or pictures of the room and even a quick paint doodle to explain what you imagined would help in a personal solution.

Height of the desk would depend a lot on where your arms happen to be falling. People come in different proportions and some have longer legs while others have longer arms, some shorter torsos etc. A tape measure from where you'd be standing to your elbow at 90° and subtract a few inches and you should get the height you're looking for.
Also the little shelves on the last desk is a monitor riser, helps to make sure you can keep your back anc neck somewhat straight looking at your monitors!

 

[Kmpkt]

I want to do my own desk when I move, since I haven't been able to find a desk that matches my desires and doesn't cost well over $1000.

This is what I bought and it is amazing. It's especially suited to your purposes as you have the option to buy the frame only and then add your own top afterwards. The way it works is there is the capacity to set the width once you have it built and I believe it goes up to about eight to nine feet wide. Once you have the setting you like, you can easily add the top of your choice.

 

[LocoMoto]

This is what I bought and it is amazing. It's especially suited to your purposes as you have the option to buy the frame only and then add your own top afterwards. The way it works is there is the capacity to set the width once you have it built and I believe it goes up to about eight to nine feet wide. Once you have the setting you like, you can easily add the top of your choice.

Did you buy a forgotten link?

 

[zovc]

Okay, here's what I hacked up in HomeStyler while I was having my coffee.

The floorplan:
It's rough and somehow doesn't match up with my measurements. Part of that is the thickness of the walls which I can't be bothered to estimate, but there's a whole foot of extra space near the entrance that I had to add to make the sapce square like it is in the real world... but the discrepancies are near the closet and the entrance, they don't particularly play into the space of the office itself. The windows aren't placed very accurately, but they aren't 1:1 representations of the windows in the place anyways.

Spoiler: First-person pictures from corners.

This isn't a very fair comparison, the only 'white' color for walls they had was this paper white and a very distinctly 'cream' off-white... at least on my monitors. There's a bit of warmth to the white on my walls, it seems like the same white paint was used on the walls, the crown molding at the roof and the DIY molding along the floor that looks like it was mostly made with spare pressure-treated lumber, 1"x4" or something. The 'wood' floor is actually pretty true to what the landlords put in here and that weird ceiling tiling was the closest to what I could get in here.

 

[zovc]

Interesting topic. I want to do my own desk when I move, since I haven't been able to find a desk that matches my desires and doesn't cost well over $1000.

You can definitely save a buck building your own desk! I was planning on doing this for a little while, but the costs kept adding up even though I was trying to be frugal.

I was looking at spending at least $300 on materials before either borrowing tools or getting them myself, then I had to find space to work, then I had to find time to work... it ended up being too much of a project in spite of how much I liked my design. I had hacked up a few templates and drawings that I can try to find and share if you're interested!

So, I would definitely recommend going into thrift stores that carry furniture and looking for weird desks, you can find a lot of interesting ideas! The desk I'm currently using was a huge inspiration for my design, it was the first desk I had found to actually use 'machine' screws like I was wanting to when I finally built my desk. I wanted to be able to disassemble my desk and reassemble it a lot without worrying about wearing the wood from screwing and unscrewing things constantly. The solution, I learned, is either a "threaded insert" or a T-Nut, depending on your application/aesthetic. IMO T-nuts are much easier to do (well), but they show up on the other side.

Originally in my design, I was going to use steel/copper tubing for the frame/legs of my desk but I ended up deciding on a hack using perforated steel flat bar because it was cheaper and would be a lot easier to work. When trying to visualize the actual building of the desk, I hypothesized that the perforations would make it a lot easier to 'cheat' and square things up rather than drilling my own holes in tubes or whatever else.

 

[Kmpkt]

Sorry!

https://www.fully.com/jarvis-standing-desk.html

 

[zovc]

Sorry!

https://www.fully.com/jarvis-standing-desk.html

You could almost certainly combine those with IKEA's table tops, they sell them separately.

 

[Kmpkt]

That is what the doctor in my office did. 500 dollar base, 25 dollar top.

 

[zovc]

That is what the doctor in my office did. 500 dollar base, 25 dollar top.

You could possibly thrift a table top for cheaper or reclaim a table top and dress it up for about the same!

 

[aquelito]

What I plan to use for my next desk : four Tiptoe desk legs and a nice Ash plain wood table top.
I would fit my 1.5U rackmount chassis beneath the table top.

 

[zovc]

Ooh! That's cool, it's very minimalist but still has some character to it.

 

[Kmpkt]

Here's the Jarvis I have set up at my office:



And here's the cable management solution it comes with:



All in all a really nice setup and like I said earlier, if you go for a cheap top or repurpose something older you can probably get the whole thing for under 750 US.

 

[zovc]

Depending on how I like this desk off of amazon I might end up following in your footsteps. That stand checks most of my boxes, and they even have an L-shape frame... Maybe I need to stop trying to pinch pennies and spend more on something I'll use every day?

Your pictures definitely make that desk look great, that glass on top dresses everything up so nicely.

 

[Kmpkt]

I work as a physio and I always have the talk about workstation costs with my clients. If you're spending a significant part of every day at your desk, poor ergonomics are going to catch up with you sooner or later. Spending the money now to get the right equipment is an investment and if you can look at it that way it'll suck a lot less spending what you need to in order to build the work environment your body needs.

 

[zovc]

Amen. Believe me I can understand that, having started martial arts after being pretty much 'just a computer nerd' for ~20 years. Staying seated for such long periods of time has made a mark on me. I still have to for work, but I talked with my boss about it. Not a lot can be done for all the driving I do, though.

I'm excited to have a sit/stand desk and if this one doesn't work out I'll definitely be returning it and putting the money towards something nicer, like the Jarvis frame you have and probably some top that will require as little tooling as possible.

It also occurred to me that moving between workspaces and chores and even just exercising while computing/between respawns is so much easier when you're already standing!

 

[zovc]

@Kmpkt, if you work in physio (physical therapy?), what's your take on office chairs? I see you have a stool.

 

[Kmpkt]

I spend most of my time standing, and I use the stool for short sit breaks. As far as chairs go, I don't mind using one as long as you are swapping out to a different position every 30-45 minutes. This gives the specific postural muscles you were using in any one position a chance to recuperate. Also, what you can't see in my office is that I also have a full length couch and coffee table as well as a rolling stool and therapy bed. I move around a LOT when I'm working partly because I have trouble sitting still and partly because I had trouble focusing on any one thing and often have multiple projects on the go in the same space. To illustrate this, the large cabinet in my office is half filled with physiotherapy texts, treatment supplies and other educational material while the other half is full of computer parts and modding supplies.