Inspiring, efficient, and attractive office spaces!

[LocoMoto]

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.

First off! Getting a black desk is a meh choice (not bad, not stellar), wouldn't recommend it with the red or rustic brick wallpaper in stock config, the marble wrap would make it a lot more acceptable with the rustic brick, and would work wonders to extend the life span of the desk top.
(I recommend the gray brick wallpaper for better contrast with the floor, depth, ease of application, lightness, theme... add more colour with personality, like artwork some accessories, tools even)

As far as the camouflage the black would offer, it comes at the cost of making the whole area around you feel more cramped, possibly less efficient. Marble wrap negates some of that.
The bar between the legs would be awesome for managing the cables though!
Had it not been for the fact that it isn't moving with your top, so getting a cable tray and attaching it to your top would be how you should manage the majority of your cables, make sure to bundle and keep them tidy so it won't be a mess you can notice directly in the foreground. Ideally you'd only want a power cable coming down at the back of one of the legs, I'd suggest anchoring that cable down close to the corners of the desk top and leg, giving it slack right at the corners for a very clean look

How phased are you be by the windows, light and sound reflections, sunlight, artificial light... power outlet position, curtains, blinds, did you have a spot in mind for your desk and perhaps other furniture, any side of your personality you'd like to display there?
What and how would you place things on your desk for your production, your work..

The room actually has a lot of potential, and for anyone who'd feel totally overwhelmed on how to make a setup efficient, inspiring... attractive, you wouldn't be alone because it is an overwhelming achievement as opposed to a simple setup.

 

[zovc]

Thanks! I think you're probably right about the black--I'm still not 'excited' about it, but I'm pretty confident that using marble wrap (along with an 'extra wide' mousepad) or something similar will make it a lot easier on the eyes. Once I get the desk in (Next week, apparently) I can always decide I want a white one instead. It's totally possible I could use something like this to make my (groups of) wires white for camouflage's sake. Also, re:wires, there are accessories I can put on top of the desk to at the very least give some cover for cabling while feasibly adding to my organization.

The gray brick versus the rustic/red is something I've been weighing--I think you're right about that, too.

The windows have pretty good (white) blinds in them. I say pretty good, they keep a lot of light out, they don't do much of anything for keeping sound in or out. I'm sure the walls and overall construction of the place don't help, either, but I can pretty clearly hear my next-door-neighbors having conversations (outside) or even the neighbor across the street. I get to know all of their personal feelings about the president!

Regarding positioning my desk, I'm actually aiming to have two workspaces--my 'personal computer' desk and my 'workbench' desk. I'm expecting my PC desk to go "in front" of the two windows, possibly towards one corner or the other. The workbench will probably be on the wall with the other window, I like the idea of having it visible from the doorway in case I'm running a test or something and want to be able to watch the progress from my living room. (There's line of sight from my couch!)

As far as other furniture, I think I want at least one seat in the room. Preferably height-adjustable (so I don't necessarily have to lower my desks) and not super difficult to move from one workstation to the other. (Particularly if I only have one.) Besides that, I'm thinking I want to make some sort of stand/shelf/networking wall for my router/switch/etc and possibly the NAS I'll eventually be building. I don't think I have enough gear (or fancy enough gear) to need to 'show off' my equipment, but having it somewhere it's easy to access (instead of, say, a closet) and close to my primary computers sounds nice. I was thinking some sort of corner/end table with some sort of decoration on top and my router/switch/modem on the bottom shelf.

 

[zovc]

Excuse the mess in my office. That desk from amazon came in and I threw it together. It was safely packaged, but there was a lot of syrofoam and it made a pretty big mess.

Here's three pictures, I tried to illustrate that I can square my shoulders out while standing up straight and resting my elbows on the desk. I'm 6'0" for the sake of reference. This is the highest position for the desk. That's a 15.6" laptop and it's about 1/4 from the left edge of the desk.

All in all, the desk seems well worth the (budget) price. Upon assembly, the desk was pretty wobbly, I noticed that it was at a seam in both of the places where the (pre-assembled) legs join with their feet. I set the desk down and took their L Allen-Phillips wrench/screwdriver to the bolts and noticed it was a different size. The largest bit for my ifixit kit fit in there, and on each of them the "back" screw was a little loose. I tightened them up as best as I could with the 'precision' style handle and that made the desk much more stable.

The desk is study enough, it has that bit little bit of wobble when you lean onto it or take your weight off. Right now, typing on my laptop there's a subtle but noticeable amount of movement on the screen. It's not distracting to me but I could see it bothering someone, especially if their laptop had a flimsier hinge for the screen. I can't remember if it was this desk or another manual sit/stand on Amazon that complained about the adjustment action, but I'm happy with the mechanism. There's no scary play in the handle or the movement, the locking mechanism seems fine so far and it smoothly pushes in (lock) and pulls out (unlock).

I haven't mounted any of my monitors on here yet, I'm kind of feeling like I should wait to vinyl wrap the top to bother with any ordeal like that. Speaking of doing that, I would recommend it. Just from leaning on the desk with my elbows/forearms, there are marks on the desktop and they're pretty visible even on the black matte finish. On the bright side, those plastic trays (which actually have pretty big wire management holes cut into them!) are easy to remove, they push up-and-out from the bottom and just slot back in from the top. I'm not sure if mounting ~3 24" monitors will compromise the stability of the desk, but it does have adjustable feet on the bottom to help level it out on uneven ground, I'm thinking if I raise the back up just a little it might help if the monitors end up making things more wobbly.

The manual suggests that you assemble the desk with two people. I didn't have any trouble doing it myself, but it is definitely cumbersome trying to flip it over and actually get it standing on your own. I could see it not being feasible for a smaller person not being able to leverage it around the way I did, but given how sturdy the desk seems it probably wouldn't hurt it to just topple it over itself if your floors would survive that.

That said, I may end up only mounting two monitors on this desk, or changing my monitor configuration up a little. (I like the idea of a portrait-oriented touchscreen monitor for keeping PDFs or guides or wikis or whatever else open.) So far I'm happy enough with the desk, its size, and its height adjustment to consider ordering a second one.

 

[zovc]

Any suggestions for storing my modem/router/switches? Thanks to where my jacks are installed, they're most elegantly located in the corner of my office, the corner of the two walls with windows if you're going off of the pictures I posted earlier in the thread. Opposite of the entrance and the closet.

I'm also trying to figure out where to keep my tools and miscellaneous cabling. Any drawers or shelving suggestions? Perhaps ones that would fit under my sit/stand desk.