Build Log: Wall-Desk Mk I

Cable management has always been a big deal for me.

In an ideal world, cables should either be exact length, or wrapped as such. And labeled. They must be labeled. Everything must be labeled.

For the longest time, I’ve made do with half-measures. Cables are labeled, tied and bunched as best as I can but due to [room] layout and circumstance, there’s always straggler cables going every which way. This wall? desk? — Wall-Desk, represents a first pass at getting things organized.

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Quick Links

• Where we started…

• Goals and constraints

• Rough design

• Step 1: Faming the Faux-Wall

• Step 2: Making the Top

• Step 3: Cutting inserts for keystones

• Step 4: Applying finish & rough wiring

• Milestone 1

• Step 6: Mounting the front speakers

• Step 7: The Left Cabinet

• Step 8: The Right Cabinet

• Milestone 2

• Step 10: Overhead cubby

• Step 11: Mounting the rear speakers

• Step 12: Cubby attachments

• Step 13: Furniture additions

• Step 14: Tech enhancements

• Milestone 3

• Mix-ups, Surprises and Lessons Learned

• Appendix: Tools, Consumables and Materials Used

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Where we started...

For the longest time, I’ve been using a Costco folding table — it’s cheap, easy to transport, easy to clean, holds a ton of weight and is pretty dang durable. Some of the more recent models even allow you to adjust the table height. Not a lot of complaints as far as raw utility goes but obviously, this is holding me back in a few key areas

• The folding feature that makes this so convenient to move? The hinge mechanism doesn’t open totally flat so there’s always a ridge in the middle of the desk

• The legs the struts always get in the way

• Being 2¼ to 2½ inches thick, this can be a bit thick for many ‘clamp on’ accessories (and the table isn’t for strong compressive force)

Since we rent, this rules out any major “built it into the wall” options

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'The Before'

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'Chaos on the left'

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'Chaos on the right'

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Goals and Constraints

I wanted to make a desk both specific for my computer but also generic for future computers (and houses) — furniture as infrastructure if you will. There were three broad categories of features/requirements to consider:

[1] Clean up this desk. This was the initial motivator for this project, to reduce the amount of wire and cable chaos for this desk.

• Eliminate the cables running across the floor for power for the speakers

• Eliminate cables running from the floor (computer) up to the desk

• Monitor mounting decoupled from the desk (mounted to the wall)

• Front speakers decoupled from the desk (mounted to the wall)

• Eliminate cable runs for hooking up the 5.1 speakers

[2] Reduce the clutter between the desks. I was going to build my wife a desk too. Due to the unique layout of this room, there is only one outlet and it’s on my left. Conveniently this lends itself to a waterfall flow from one desk to the next.

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The computer room we’re working with, illustrating the flow between the desks

My wife’s desk would follow a similar ethos — reduce the amount of cable clutter running across the floor and between the floor and the desk. Extending waterfall flow to additional machines down the road follows the same.

[3] Since we rent, the following additional considerations came into play:

• Nothing too dependent on the layout, shape or size of a room

• Had to be somewhat self-contained and/or able to be broken down for eventually moving

Certainly, there are going to be just-in-time requirements that will come up during the build.

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Rough Design

At the core, this project was going to break down into five components

1. The faux-wall: a framed plywood wall that I would attach the monitor mounts to and hide cables inside, routing them left-right and up-down

2. A laminated-ply desk top. While I appreciate the process of milling and joining lumber to make solid wood tops, it’s hard to argue with the ease of working with nice ply - and I like the laminated edges. I planned to trim up the front edge both to reduce wear and for some contrast

3. A left cabinet which would house the computer,

4. A right cabinet which would house my subwoofer and the majority of my drawers and lastly,

5. Some form of overhead storage

I had never built anything like this before so there was a lot of running up and down the stairs to get some rough numbers to add to my sketches.

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Initial Framing

The width was easy, 48” to line it up with plywood and the height I chose in such a way to get this through doorways (and tall enough that I can’t see the top surface). If you don’t need any kind of upper cabinet, by all means chop this way down in height.

The horizontal members I offset so that there would be no chance for the pocket-hole screws to run into each other.

There as a bit of trial and error, trying to figure out where to put the horizontal members. How I arrived at the 26¾ bottom measurement:

• I wanted the bottom side of the desk to be about 30” high

• The [bottom side of the] left horizontal 2x4 should then be 1½” lower

• Offsetting the right horizontal 2x4 should be an additional 1½” lower

• Give myself a bit of wiggle room (¼”)

The good news is it doesn’t really matter since this will be behind the plywood anyways and the rest of the setup is plenty strong.

At this point, I hadn’t figured out the 16¼” value yet — I determine this in the next step: figuring out the size of the middle panel and ‘whatever is left’

Sizing the bottom panel

To determine the height of the bottom panel, we need to figure out where the bottom side of the desk will be.

Depending on your height and the availability of chairs that adjust well for you, you may want to spend more time dialing the height of the bottom side of the desk. I’m 6’ and with average chairs, found that I could get an ideal seating position from the 29¾”.

Here, note that the middle panel extends past the bottom of the desk (or another way to look at it: the desk is placed higher than the bottom panel). This means that the plywood seam is hidden.

I wanted to double up on the plywood where the monitor mounts would be installed. To install the my monitor mounts, I needed a 13” plate. Making it slightly narrower (46½”) means that I can easily center the this without worrying about exact fits.

We’ll get to the remaining numbers in the next step.

The remaining panels

This next step we need to size the 12¼” value. Again, if you’re particularly short/tall or and/or you are using particularly small or large monitors (or want to use a monitor in portrait mode) then you’ll need to spend more time with this step. If you are using gas strut type monitor arms, you have a lot more flexibility with vertical adjustment (but they cost more)

Knowing that I was going to have my desktop surface 29¾” off the ground (meaning the actual top side was 31¼” off the ground). I could work out roughly where I wanted the inset plate to go, vertically. It helps a lot to have a scrap piece of plywood (or even cardboard) to use as a mock table top.

Once you’ve figured out how high up you want to slide the inset panel up, it’s a good idea to have a few extra inches above the plate — this plywood seam will generally be hidden by your monitors (in my case, I have 4” extra).

This means that whatever plywood is left, becomes the very top panel. Easy peasy.

All together now

So here we have the final mock for building out the faux-wall!

You can see that the bottom seam will be hidden by the desk-top surface and the top will be hidden by the monitor array.

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Step 1: Framing the Faux-Wall

This is one of the easier stages, we’re just framing up a basic wall. The only thing to be aware of is when cutting the front-panels to size, these are final cuts so they should be cut with clean finish-edges in mind.

Cut 2x4s to size

3x at 79¼” (left, center and right verticals)

2x at 48” (top and bottom)

Not shown: the horizontal members, I cut these later exact-fit.

Pocket holes!

I happen to have a KregHD kit so I used that. A normal Kreg or screwing into the ends is fine too.

Transferring the center line

After we cover the frame with plywood, we won’t be able to see the center 2x4 so here, I’m transferring the center mark to the top and bottom members (wrap the center mark around the edge too!)

Frame-up

Whoops, didn’t get the exact picture! Not shown: cutting the horizontal members to exact fit. I attached them using normal pockehole screws

Visualizing the layout

At some point you’re going to want to bring the monitors out to the shop to get a visual perspective.

Cutting the front panels

First I’m cutting down the back panel to size. Since I’m going with a 48” wide faux-wall, I only need to make one cut and the back is finished.

Tack the back panel on

Using a screw in each corner, I tacked the back panel onto frame. I knew I was going to be popping this back panel on and off a lot before cinching it down for good. By using as few screws as possible at this stage, I’m reducing the number of screw holes that get worn out.

Cutting the front panels

Now to cut a sheet of ply winto the three panels for the front side of the faux-wall

Clean cuts

These front panels are user-facing and we are cutting them to final size. A high-tooth count blade will give you clean, crisp cuts.

Continuous grain

Once the monitors are mounted, desk and shelving is mounted, you’re not going to really see this anymore, but I wanted a continuous grain for the faux wall.

Here the faux-wall is just leaning and the panels are just sitting on top of each other edgewise.

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Step 2: Making the Top

This is the last easy stage: just laminating together two panels of plywood. I’ll come back to this later to add some hardwood trim on the leading edge, both to give it a hint of color but also to improve the durability on that high-touch edge.

Cutting the tabletop

Double-stacking ¾” plywood gives me a 1½” thick desktop that isn’t too bulky or heavy but also isn’t flimsy.

Ripping a sheet of plywood in half would result in a 24” deek desktop and debated whether this would be too shallow or not. Spoiler: it’s not! Getting the monitors off the desk completely frees up a lot of visual space.

Double check the two halves

Spend the time to make sure the ugliest faces are facing inwards towards each other.

If you are planning on leaving the plywood edges exposed, try to orient the panels so that all of the imperfections in the plies are on one side.

Optional: Mark the screw points

Here I’m marking out a pattern for screwing the two halves together after the glue-up. I went this route because I didn’t have an elegant/easy way to apply a lot of compressive force to the center portion of the panel glue-up.

I probably could have figured out something - throwing a jointer and planer on there probably would have done the trick. It’s certainly much nicer if you have a way to do this without screws but since this was the bottom side of the desk, it’s not a huge deal.

Glue up

About 12 square-feet of glue up — gotta move fast! Have a helping pair of hands to pour & spread makes this doable.

Clamps. Clamps. Clamps.

There’s never enough clamps. Here, we’re clamping all around the edge, using cull blocks on both sides to minimize any surface damage to the plywood.

Try your best to make sure the two panels are absolutely aligned on one edge - it will make cleanup later much less stressful.

Pre-drilling for the screws

Probably didn’t need that many screws but I got carried away with the symmetry. Make absolutely sure you’re not blowing through the other side!

Cut the desk to depth

This is why it’s so crucial to align the panels on one edge — makes cleaning up and truing up the top a simple task with a saw.

After cutting to depth

Nice, crisp and aligned panels.

Quick clean-up of the top

This plywood was pretty good so I went straight to 220-grit on all sides.

Done for now

We’ll come back to this later but for now, we can set the top aside.

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Step 3: Cutting inserts for keystones

This must have been the longest week of my life filled with an endless stream of holes to cut for boxes and covers. The big lesson from this is “if it’s behind a plastic cover plate, it doesn’t matter - just get it close”.

Collect all the bits!

100% you’re going to forget something and/or you’ll think of something midway through perfecting your ‘final layout’

Group your plates and connectors (not to scale!)

You can see the big audio cluster in the bottom right (where my subwoofer is) . In the bottom left I have all the ports that allow me to “plug my computer into the faux-wall”

First layout

Laying everything out, now with lines. Since this panel will be fastened down on top of the 2x4 frame, you’ll need to be cognizant of where they are in your layout.

Rookie moves

This is called the Mk I desk for a reason. When I did this desk, I focused on “minimal sized holes" to get the job done”.

Rookie movies continue

Here I’m drilling a hole to pass my router bit through to route out the channel that would allow me to pass three keystones.

Rookie moves still

It took an obscene amount of time to setup each ‘bounding box’ for my router to cut out an exact slot for the keystones.

One down

A nice, snug fit. Now just to repeat this for all of the remaining plates.

First corner done!

Not going to lie, it was super satisfying when all of these plates dropped in place. I ended up spray-painting all of my plates black

Bottom panel done

So on the left, we can see (top row) network, USB and a cable passthrough (for monitor cables) and (bottom row) a quick-jack for my rear-left speaker as well as the 5.1 audio input.

On the right hand side we have the other end of that 5.1 followed by a 5.1 distribution plate and a combo plate that allows me to pass a second audio source into the speakers (RCA) as well as the hookup for the rear-right speakers

Batch spray-painting

It’s a little ridiculous how much a markup there can be for black cover plates.

Spraypainted

It’s not perfect (I’m not that good at spray-painting!) but I think it’s not bad. Certainly well worth the money saved.

Getting the monitor mounts vertically spaced

Unfortunately, I have two different types of monitors so I needed to bring them out to figure out how much to offset the monitor mounts to get the monitors roughly level.

[Pre]Aligning the monitors

So the plan here is the mount the monitors to the stands on pieces of wood that I can align after I’ve removed the monitors.

A gas shock mount in the middle would allowed me to avoid this but the monitors wouldn’t be so nearly flush to the wall. Spoiler: I found a neat solution later to entire the monitors are reasonably even without getting a gas-strut mount.

Inset Plate

So I wanted to double-up the ¾” plywood for the monitor mounts to give a bit more mass for hanging the monitors. Having a two plate design means also that I can make drastic monitor upgrades in the future and I could mostly work around making a different inset plate.

Here I’m cutting the plate to size: making it narrower than the overall width of the faux-wall means I don’t have to fret about minute width discrepancies — just center the plate.

Laying out the middle panel

Here the double tape stripe is where I’m expecting the desktop to end up and the third tape stripe will be where i align the insert panel

Rookie movies continued!

Here I’ve set up a few guides for cutting a set of parallel boxes (two each for the receptacles and the cable pass-thrus)

USB connector hole

I want to pass USB ports from the bottom (where the computer is) up to above the desk in front of me (where I would be plugging peripherals into). By this time, I’m getting pretty good at cutting these holes out.

Inset plate cut

So now I’ve cut the four holes needed for the inset plate. I’m tracine out where I need to cut on the ‘actual’ middle panel for cables to pass through.

Giant cutout time

Since these cutouts will be easily covered by the inset plate, I made them generously sized.

Almost done with cutouts

Almost done with the middle plate, here, just double checking that the large cutouts on the middle plate allow easy access to the cutouts on the inset.

Visualization check

The inset plate is screwed in from the back to keep it looking clean. Here I’m only using a few screws since I know I’m going to have to remove and reinstall the plate a few times.

Drilling for the monitor mounts

Need to be Reasonably precise with the drilling here. I marked and drilled two holes before making the drilling the third one just in case there was (unintended!) shifting.

Adding threaded inserts

I used threaded inserts on the inside surface (the same surface I’m screwing through to the inset plate). What this means is that when a bolt comes in from the front, the threaded insert will keep it from falling forward/out.

Test mount

So here, the bolts go in through the front and the threads go all the way through to the back, screwing into the captive threaded inserts.

Speaker connections

I wanted to mount the front speakers to the wall get them off the desk. To keep the speaker wires from being snaked around (and to make this easier to transport), I want to have speaker connections for each speaker already on the wall.

Thankfully hole saws are a thing

It’s always a bit scary using a holesaw on the final surface but thankfully no issues and almost anything beats the router/jigsaw hole cutting I’ve been doing all week…

Notching out the frame

Passing wires between compartments needs tool in the frame so the oscillating tool to the rescue here.

Almost done with the hole cutting

So part of making this faux-wall self-contained is taking in network connectivity and power and passing both downstream. So now I need to cut the holes to mount the power gang-boxes and network in/out keystones

Cutting boxes

Pretty straightforward: drill four holes in the corners and connect the holes using a jigsaw.

For the low-voltage boxes

For the low-voltage boxes, I needed to route out two divots for the tabs to settle in.

LV Boxes done, Power-In Now

Thankfully the power-in box is circular!

Power-in

Shoved a power-in plug for now. Note that the low-voltage boxes and the power-in (and gang box) are actually on a strip of plywood (and also going through the 2x4 frame as well). I know I’m going to have to take this piece on and off a lot in the next few steps

Cutting a relief for baseboard trim

I want this faux-wall to fit right up against a wall - regardless of whether there is baseboard moulding or not, so I cut out a generous relief.

Sealing up the box

Since I cut the relief on the back plywood, there’s now a hole on the wallside. To try and keep bugs out, here’s just screwing a quick cover.

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Step 4: Applying finish & rough wiring

Coming off a high from finally finishing with the hole cutting festival, this was an upbeat step with lots of visual progress. The three major sub-steps were:

1. Roughing in the wires

2. Trimming out the desktop and the inset panel

3. Applying finish and sealer

Roughly laying out all the connections

It’s starting to come together, still quite a bit of work to get everything hooked up in a state that I can bring it into the house.

Wiring up speaker outputs

I had previously used these connectors in my living room as another faux-wall for rear speakers in our TV setup.

Labels are lifesaver

I wasn’t ready to permanently install these wires and endpoint yet (that would happen in the house) but all of the connections were wired up to the appropriate rough lengths.

5.1 Audio

This is the pair of wall plates bringing a 5.1 audio signal from my computer on the left, to my speakers, on the right. The low-profile cables I got weren’t available in the standard green-orange-black, so labels came to the rescue.

Network mess

These two keystone plates receive the upstream network connection (4x1GbE, 2x10GbE)

Super important to over-label things

It’s super easy for all the cables to get into a mismatched mess in a hurry.

Edge banding

I had a bunch of edge banding leftover so I applied some to the front facing edge of the two side panels

XLR input

I wanted to have my microphone (Shure SM58) mounted somewhere - not sure yet, but definitely off the desk. I decided on a spot roughly parallel with the USB ports (above the desk) but off to the side. This position works reasonably well - it allows me to run an overhead mic or a desktop mic.

This used to be one of the most tedious steps

Nope. About 5-seconds with the HVLP. Count to 10 and wipe it down. (The color is Varathane Early American)

Adding trim to the inset plate

Originally I think wanted to trim out all four sides, but I settled on the top-bottom sides only. I had wanted walnut for the stark color contrast with the pale pine, but couldn’t get any in time so I went with red-oak. This turned out great.

Finishing the inset-plate

Ran 5/16 roundover on the oak trim: visually softens up the inste plate quite a bit and the red oak give just a subtle difference in color.. This is after a few coats of polyuirethane.

Trimming out the desk

I repeated the same trim with the desktop leading edge. It was around this point when I decided I would not stain the inset panel nor the desktop. I figured this would give some night ‘lightness’ to the desk and offer some contrast to the richer faux-wall

Finishing the desktop

This is a few coats of clear polyurethane which should help keep the desk reasonably protected. Not shown: I added a round over to the leading edge of the trim to soften it up.

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Milestone 1

Finally. We’re getting the faux-wall into the house.

Awkwardly wrestling this downstairs

Getting this in the house and down the stairs without destroying everything was quite a challenge.

Finally tacking down the back panel

In Step 1, we only tacked the back panel on using four screws (because I would be taking the panel on and off repeatedly). Now that everything is in place, time to cinch the panel to the frame. I need to countersink the screws so my faux-wall will sit flat against the real wall.

Labels will save you

Label everything excessively -- assume that labels will fall off and label them in multiple places. This here will be the speaker distribution plate on the right: I will run short lengths of speaker-wire from the audio-out connections on the subwoofer to this distribution node which then get routed to the output jacks on the faux-wall.

Right angle adapters for XLR

My XLR-in jack was much longer than I thought it would be that I needed to get a right angle adapter so that I wouldn’t run into the back plywood panel. I supposed I could have made my own, but I wasn’t confident enough in this area and didn’t want to introduce another variable in the connectivity.

I needed a right angle adapter of both genders since I was passing XLR into and out of the wall.

Bottom connections looking done

These are the main connectors and their plates all in place.

Clustering the USB extensions

This module allows me to bring all of my USB ports directly up to the desk level. I opted to directly extend the USB ports here and specifically avoid USB hubs since they tend to add additional initialization time during boot-up.

There is also a 3.5mm stereo-jack on this panel as well: this gets converted to RCA and fed into the speaker’s RCA input - this lets me connect any audio source directly to the faux-wall even when the computer is off.

Coming together

Here the panels are snug-fit, with the DisplayPort cables hanging out of their respective pass-thrus.

Securing the faux-wall to the real-wall

This step can probably be optional: it’s certainly less necessary if you have the drawers done at this point to prop up against the wall to keep it from falling forward (especially if you’re not using overhead storage).

That being said, it’s probably prudent to secure these to the wall. I marked off the center stud in my faux-wall and aligned it on the real-studs and simply sank two screws through the back panel.

Tacked all of the front panels

Now I can tack the top panel onto the frame. I’ve premarked on the tape additional spots where I might add more screws later.

The reveal for the baseboard trim

The cutout we made earlier lets the faux-wall sit flush against the real-wall

Positioning the top

Here I’m fiddling with the alignment of the desk — I ended up just centering. It was about this point when I decided I didn’t want to secure the desk to the wall or the cabinets and that it would be free to move/slide.

The advantage here is that, if I need to do any maintenance, I can simply place the desktop aside and I would have free access. The good news is that the desk doesn’t slide much — if yours does, you can always use a couple silicone gripper pads to fix that.

Making the speaker connect cables

Here, I’m making a bunch of short audio cables to connect my subwoofer to the wall.

First hook up

Finally, after all this time, we can finally hook up the audio lines to the subwoofer — no more [visible] cables running left-to right!

PC connected

Here we have the PC side hooked up as well: the 5.1 audio cables on the left, output to the right and the USB/video connections are plugged in and routing higher up.

Milestone 1

And finally. The PC boots and passes a cursory check. At this point, I’m running the desktop on folding sawhorses. Spoiler: the sawhorses, for me, are a perfect height.

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Step 6: Mounting the front speakers

Both as an easier side task and because I really did need to get the front speakers off the desk, I made some adjustable wall mounts from various bits of scrap wood. I considered (and really wanted) to buy some off the shelf speaker-mounts but read more than a few reviews indicating that the fit for some of the cheaper mounts I was looking at (which weren’t exactly cheap either) were a little too tight. So the least frustrating solution would be to make my own.

L-bracket

The rough plan here is to make an fat L-bracket that the speaker sits on or is attached to. This bracket would then swivel on another piece that is attached to the wall. My speakers don’t sit fruly flat and so I need to have them fully mounted by the vertical member.

The vertical member

This is vertical/back component of the speaker mount, just a U shape with a hole in it. The wide gap allows for speaker wire and connection to pass through and the speaker itself is just bolted to that hole.

Test positioning

Here you can see the how the speaker will ultimately be attached to that upside-down . You can also see the bottom plate with a pivot hole.

Bottom pivot

Here is that bottom plate with a small wooden piece that gets secured to the wall. The plate sits on this and pivots allowing me to angle the speakers laterally.

Splash of stain

A bit of color on the mounts to have them fit into the rest of the faux-wall

Mounting the speakera

The speakers themselves are just bolted using ¼-20 hex bolts.

Test fit the swivel

So the speaker mount swivels along the bolt and is secured by a wingnut.

Mounting all of the speakers evenly

Now to secure all three front speakers to the wall. I use pocket-hole screws from the under side for this. It’s really handy to be able to set the entire desktop aside to get easy access underneath.

Mounted

The side speakers (in a vertical orientation) are slightly obscured by the monitors but that’s fine. You can design around this for your speakers if it bothers you.

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Step 7: The Left Cabinet

So the left cabinet will house the computer, it’s UPS, my audio mixer (in a drawer) and a pull out flat-surface. If you have a larger case, you may not be able to fit all of this in. The cabinet was large enough that, even after making room for the computer case, I had room to store some extra peripherals.

Four sided box

This is pretty straightforward - it’s a four sided plywood box. I didn’t go out of my way to add any left-right stretchers to stiffen it up and reduce racking — once everything was loaded up, I didn’t run into any racking concerns.

PC Pull out

The computer case would be on a pull-out tray to make it easier to get the everything in and out. I debated adding a handle or something to make it easier to pull out, but couldn’t come up with something easy that was low-profile/out of the way.

Making the worktop

Im making the worktop in the same fashion as the desktop: double laminated plywood.

Small screwup

I messed up and wrote down the wrong width of the desk. I used the leftover red-oak from trimming out the desktop to trim the sides of the desk here. Phew.

Mini-desktop

AT this point, i decided that since the worktop shared a similar design to the desktop, I would keep it natural colored and just apply polyurethane to protect it.

Keeping stain off

But since I was going to stain the rest of the cabinet, to keep stain from inevitably getting onto this surface, I wrapped it. Just make sure you label it so you don’t mix up the orientation!

Here I’ve flipped the cabinet carcass upside down and installed the worktop.

Sizing the mixer drawer

Brought the mixer out to size the drawer for it — turns out I totally forgot how massive XLR connectors are (even the super low profile ones). Oh well - maybe one day I’ll rejig the drawers (or I’ll get a different mixer/device).

Installing drawers

I struggle a lot with installing drawers. These kreg drawer slides are helpful but still, it’s a huge struggle for me.

The struggle

Is definitely a struggle to get to this point. Even with the drawer slide installation jigs, it’s rare that two drawers are coplanar with each other the first time. Guess I just need more practice.

Drawer Pulls

Thankfully, installing the drawer pulls is mega easy with the Kreg guide.

Drawer fronts

The Krge guide allows me to make perfectly spaced and sized holes for the drawer pulls. I can use those holes to temporarily tack the drawer front to the drawer. I can then attach the drawer fronts from the inside and then reinstall the drawer pulls (using the screw holes as a guide)

Masking off the work top

Since I wanted the worktop to be plain, I need to mask this off to make sure I didn’t accidentally get any stain on it.

No spill!

Turned out pretty good. It’s a small touch but I think it makes for a cleaner look.

Main cabinet done

A quick splash of stain to match the faux-wall.

Tweak for the work drawers

I didn’t like that the false front on the pull out tray was only attached with glue, so I sank two screws into it and covered it with dowel rod.

Blended in

Turned out okay. Over time the drawer pulls may wiggle loose a bit but since the screws holding them are now captive, the handles won’t come off.

Keyboard carrier

I know I’ll have extra space in the main compartment of the left cabinet so I wanted to store extra keyboards. I use extra keyboards when doing quick work on laptops etc.

And I kept a really basic keyboard in reserve because, funny enough, my primary keyboard has issues initializing fast enough to be used to enter and work in BIOS.

Keyboard carrier mounted

Just used pocket holes on the bottom and back - this isn’t a substantial weight.

Sideways mounted mixer

Turning the mixer sideways made more sense as it would be how I would use it ergonomically while sitting.

Removing the wrap

The cabinet was getting closer to being done. I added some tape to the ‘grabbing surfaces’ because I was still touching surfaces with slightly wet stain and didn’t want this to transfer.

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Step 8: The Right Cabinet

The right cabinet will be built in a similar fashion as the left cabinet. It will have a worktop, a few drawers and instead of a pull-out tray for a PC, it will have a cutout for me to slide the subwoofer into. The substantial cutout for the subwoofer means that I need to add a support leg to transfer the weight down. I originally wanted to have two drawers for laptops but there just wasn’t enough space to add it.

I should note that for both of these drawers, I went with soft-close drawer slides (my first time working with them) … and I’m torn. When the soft-close action works, it’s great - gives everything a nice, well-polished feel. On the other hand, it takes substantially more force to open the drawer (to overcome the self-closing mechanism). In hindsight, I wouldn’t go with soft closing drawer slides in the future.

Cutout for the subwoofer

The right cabinet has a cutout for me to slide the subwoofer into the cabinet. Since I was removing a substantial portion of the panel, I added a support leg to keep it steady. Like the left cabinet, I didn’t add any specific struts to keep it from racking.

Four sided box

Just like the left cabinet, this just a basic four sided box.

Depth stop

The only different now is the support leg. This leg juts into the interior space of the cabinet, so I made a matching depth stop. By butting drawer slides up against the support leg and this depth stop, they are guaranteed to be inset by the same amount.

First two drawers

Like the left cabinet, the first drawer is just a double-laminated worktop. However, unlike the left side, I didn’t need to trim this out with oak since I measured with width correctly. The second drawer will be the primary doodad drawer.

Dividers

I added dividers to keep all my doodads from flying around and to give everything a home.

All done

The rest of this was done like the left cabinet: I added two more drawers. The bottom one for tools and a drawer for a single laptop to be permanently docked inside.

I specifically left a large gap in between drawers since I planned on leaving the laptops permanently in the drawer.

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Milestone 2

This is huge: this milestone brings the desk into a daily-drivable state and I can focus on addons and tweaks.

Snug as a bug

The large opening makes it easy to get the subwoofer in and out if needed (even with the drawers installed)

In the background, you can see the power-output. This will provide power to the subwoofer, my laptop and anything else ‘downstream’

Whoops

Add in all the drawers: at this point, I realized I mixed up the continuous grain on the front. I could fix it but it adds character (I might fit it one day!)

Re-connect the subwoofer

Just reconnect everything back together.

Install the PC and UPS into the left cabinet

Same thing here, just putting everything into the left cabinet

Reconnect everything above the desk

It’s a bit hard to see in this shot, but I swapped the three white 3.5mm cables on the right hand side (5.1 audio) for properly colored green-orange-black cables

All hooked up

Everything is back to a workable state again, now using the cabinets instead of sawhorses. I do need to hide the cables and connections at the bottom though — both for aesthetics but also to keep from nudging it with my feet.

Two cover boxes

Raided the scrap bin to make these. The idea is to slide this overtop and around the cables and connectors and secure it to the wall.

Raided the scrap bin

You can tell I raided the scrap bin to make this! Here, we screw this box frame to the faux-wall and then screw the ‘cover plate’ on top of it. No more accidentally kicking nudging these cables.

All done

A coat of color and we’re all done here. The boxes work reasonably well as foot rests as well.

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Step 10: Overhead cubby

Originally I was planning on surface mounting a light fixture to the top portion of the faux wall but due to some conflicts with the lights I bought, this didn’t work out. To make use of the space, I added a quick French-cleat cubby.

Making the top and bottom

I wanted the cubby to line up with the outside edge of the faux-wall, so that means ~48” for the frame plus two edge pieces approximately ¾” each — measure the actual size here.

Notching out the interior dividers

I plan on hanging this cubby with a flush-french cleat. As such, the inside dividers (everything but the left- and right-most ones) need to have a cutout to allow the entire cubby to swing over and pivot onto a wall-cleat.

Assembling the outside corners

These Kreg clamps are awesome for cinching corners together.

Adding the middle dividers

Those clamps work great for T-style clamping as well. Here you can see one of the cleats — I’m directly attaching it to the vertical dividers

Almost done

Here you can see a better angle of how the cleat is attached. It’s attached to each of the middle dividers through the back and also attached to the outer panels through the side. When the top gets added, it gets secured on the top too!

All framed up

Here we’ve added the top and given everything a standard coat of stain. I eased over most of the edges with a 5/16 roundover. I specifically didn’t roundover the top side since it’s not a surface I would come into contact with.

Adjustable shelving

Using the Kreg shelf pin jig, I added a single adjustable cubby.

Installing the cubby 'live'

Having a vac on standby (and an extra set of hands!) makes this a clean of an installation as possible.

Attach the cleat to the wall

Here I’m securing the cleat to the faux-wall into the hidden studs. You can add some surface screws as well if you want. You can see that, instead of mounting my light anywhere, I just propped it up on the topside of the faux-wall. The light bounces off the ceiling and spills everywhere enough.

All done!

Now there’s a storage place for things you might need somewhat irregularly but still within arm’s reach. This cubby can also be built upon to add additional features.

Snack space

The most important gain here is now there is snack space within arm’s reach.

Almost there

All the major bits are done, now we’re just chasing down smaller feature requests.

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Step 11: Mounting the rear speakers

Previously, I mounted the front speakers of my 5.1 setup to the wall. I had originally thought of a convoluted way of snaking speaker wire for the rear speakers up and over my head, running along the ceiling, to the wall behind me and mount the speakers there. This was needlessly complicated and wouldn’t necessarily be guaranteed for the next house and certainly doesn’t fit the ethos of “build as much as you can into this framework”.

Using drawer slides

By using drawer slides, I can pull the rear speakers when I need them and push them back in when I don’t. The multiple holes allows me to snake the speaker wire in and the friction holds it there without having to clamp it down.

Spacers

I added some spacers to move the speaker further away from the desk. We need to do this because if the speakers are too close (without the spacers), I can’t necessarily pivot the speakers in the retracted state.

Same speaker mount

The speaker mount will be the same as before, mounted to the end of the slide.

Mounting to the cubby

We attach the drawer slide to a plate and directly screw it to the cubby - this can be removed if needed down the road.

Retracted state

In a retracted state, the speakers are still elevated so they do come into play, but importantly, aren’t in the way.

Extended

In the extended state, they move behind me and as such, fulfill their role as rear speakers.

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Step 12: Cubby attachments

Previously, I mentioned that we could attach things to the cubby and here, we’re going to add a paper towel dispenser and also a microphone boom arm! (I could never find a paper towel dispenser I liked so it made sense to just make my own).

Make it black

Because black is the only color really. This is just 1” PVC that i threw on a quick scrap wood balancing jig and spraypainted.

Scrap wood frame

Made a frame out of some scraps I cleaned up

Captive rod holder

I’m going to hold the paper towel by running the PVC through the center of roll and holding that PVC rod captive. The wood holding the PVC captive swings out of the way to allow the rod to be removed and replaced.

All assembled

That topmost piece of wood holds the PVC rod captive.

Directly mounting to the cubby

Again, having a vacuum during installation is handy!

All mounted

Paper towel dispenser reporting for snack duty

Brainstorming

For the mic boom arm, I essentially wanted to make a grommet that could be pivoted. So first, we’re off to raid the scraps

Rough plan

Sandwiching to pieces of ¾” plywood would give enough material to make a wooden grommet. By offsetting the grommet hole to one side (as opposed to the middle), we can pivot the whole thing to give us some more reach. The smaller square plate (with a hole already) will be the fixed base plate that we will pivot on.

Quick tests

Quickly testing out the plan here. We’ll make a simple L-bracket for the fixed base plate and screw that to the cubby.

Attaching to the cubby

Here, we’re directly screwing the L-bracket to the cubby. I considered adding a triangle wedge to reinforce but this isn’t a lot of weight so I passed on that for now.

Installed

Now we can install the mic suspension arm into the diy grommet and have the mic over and behind the monitors and off the table.

Swing the arm around

When having calls, just swing the arm around and we’re in business. The suspension arm has a built in XLR cable that I an ti the XLR-input built into my wall.

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Step 13: Furniture additions

So I’ve been a long time user of the IKEA Markus chair and, for that price point, it’s fantastic. The fact is, there aren’t very many high-back chairs out there in this price point. Two things about the Markus bother me though:

1. The fixed armrests are always in the way

2. The seat cushion, after almost a decade, is trending on the flatter side

Perhaps a somewhat controversial choice, I went with the Autonomous Ergochair 2. It not perfect but it’s a substantial improvement over my Markus! To support the seat change though, we’re going to add a footrest and floormat.

Glorified lectern

This footrest os a glorified cookbook stand really (minus the bottom lip — I wanted a smooth roll off). Built from scraps with glue and brads. The cushion is a gel seat cushion that I strapped to the stand.

View from the back

I can’t think of anything right this moment, but I did leave the underneath relatively open — we can keep something down here if the need arises.

NIce and snug

Fits perfectly between the two cover boxes

Plywood floormat

For my chair, I went straight to rollerblade wheels for which improve rollability — even on carpet. Worth noting though, that the rollability is great when not sitting on the chair. When you’re sitting in the chair, you tend to sink too much into the carpet. So step 1 was to add a firmer surface. I went with ½” plywood which seems to be holding up well.

Too rolly

Plywood by itself was a bit too rolly, I couldn’t lean back without the whole chair going. So my first step was to try adding an adhesive grippy surface. Spoiler: this doesn’t work so well.

Settled on a cheap floormat

I eventually took a floor mat and wrapped it around the plywood and it’s been working reasonably well

Long term floor and chair

I’ve settled on this configuration: the Ergochair 2 with rollerblade wheels atop a plywood floormat with a rug wrapped on it. So far no major issues.

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Step 14: Tech enhancements

We’re getting close to the end here. Over the last few weeks and months, I’ve changed out some of the tech around this desk to accommodate a better flow. This is a summary of where the tech is now.

Coasters

I like to have drinks at the desk and wanted to keep water marks off the desk as long as possible, so I made some easy coasters. I made these with ¾” ply and Mod Podge.

When it comes time to remove the paper — soak it so much more than you think you have to. Like, I drenched my coaster and let it soak for 30 minutes. A few coats of polyurethane to protect it.

A few things over the last little while

I swapped out for a different Vornado fan — this model fits underneath the monitors so I can tuck it at the back ad it’s out of the way.

I added a somewhat large LED clock. It’s USB powered and the whole wall is backed up by UPS so really, it’s set and forget.

I switched out my wired G502 mouse for a wireless G502 just to reduce a little bit of cable clutter. It took about two weeks before I caved and ordered the PowerPlay charging mat and it’s one of the best (albeit expensive) purchases ever. Get all the benefits of the high performance mouse but without having to stop and charge it.

Magnetic cables

Over the last year I’ve switched most of the cables and connectors in my house over to magnetic connectors. It’s a bit pricey to do the conversion but just having a magnetic link is super convenient. Depending on your magnetic cable/connection of choice, you can even get data transfer as well.

Workspace lighting

The big shop light I have on the top of the faux-wall is more of a room filling light. It’s dimmable but at the end of the day, it’s still a roomwide light. If I just want a bit of light at my desk, then I have a little cheapo monitor light bar. It’s got adjustable intensity and white balance and the way it’s setup, it doesn’t shine light directly on the monitor so I’m happy.

Well of course there's RGB

The inset plate is perfect for a 16’ RGB strip. Mine is the Govee H6163 Dreamcolor model (Wifi + BT + segment addressable). It’s such a stupid little thing but it’s nice when it’s setup.

USB-C dock

I use a USB-C hub to pass power and network connectivity to the laptop. A right-angle USB-C adapter helps get the cables to go cleanly.

Since this laptop is going to run forever inside this drawer, it made sense to place it upside down so the fans have better access to airflow.

On the off chance I need to connect something directly to the laptop, I have a right-angle USB adapter to make ti a bti easier

Virtual monitor

My work laptop doesn’t have a DisplayPort and I don’t have any intention of running HDMI cables so I got a virtual monitor HDMI dongle. It plugs into a HDMI port and makes the computer think there’s a monitor of whatever resolution connected to it. This means now I can remote into this laptop at 4K

Notification/status light

The office is generally fairly isolated and if I have headphones on or music playing then the outside world might as well not exist. I bought a cheap lamp and linked it to a smart-outlet to provide a visual ‘ping’

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Milestone 3

I started this project with three objectives:

1. Clean up the cables of my desk

2. Clean up the cables between our desks and,

3. Make all of this modular/moveable

I think I’ve hit those objectives (little things like the mic mount, paper towel holder and rear speaker extensions can be removed for transport) and certainly learned a lot. There were a lot of ‘firsts’ for this project (hardwood, keystones, soft-close drawer slides, start to finish electrical).

Considering just how much time I spend on the computer every day, I’m shocked I waited so long to take on this project. I didn’t specifically call it out in the build notes, but I covered almost all bits of superfluous branding - I’m a big fan of labels and marques but they need to tell me something important and not be branding for branding-sake. This desk has been a long time coming and makes my home office wonderful to sit down to.

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Done for now?

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Mix-ups, Surprises and Lessons Learned

By far the biggest lesson learned revolved around the cutouts - I had originally thought that it would be a quick weekend task (ha!)

There is absolutely nothing to be gained from cutting ultra precise holes - any super clean work you do will be covered by the cover plates anyways. (I guess I knew this was true, I just needed to indulge my OCD once) . Don’t try and get fancy and cut exact holes for each connector — if you’re going to go down that road, just get a custom laser cut plate. Instead, leverage the easy nature of low-voltage boxes

Humorously, I seriously underestimated just how many labels and cord markers I would need for this project. I bought a 100-pack of Dotz Cord ID tags used at least half, just for this faux-wall desk and the accompanying PC. It’s very easy to burn through the inventory: each cable on the PC is tagged and for the cords inside the wall, some of them are tagged twice (once at each end).

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By the time of this post, I’ve been running with this desk as below for the better part of a year. Some changes I’d consider making if I redid this project

• Add more network ports to pass to the downstream desks

• Add more power outlets (at least one more behind the monitors, and one at the top of the faux-wall (possibly connected to a switch)

• Instead of a single USB cluster, add two more clusters out of sight: one below the desk-line and one hidden behind the monitors

• A clean cutout at the back of the desktop to route cables

• Integrate wireless charging into the desk (2x slots) — connected using magnetic cables so I can still just remove the top

• Consider a vertically sliding laptop drawer

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Tools, Consumables and Materials Used

Build Materials

• 6x sheets of ¾” plywood (approximately 51CAD/ea. at the time)

• 5x 2x4x96 SPF (approximately 4CAD/ea. at the time)

• 7x soft-closing full extension slides, 22” (normally up to 40CAD/ea! Due to a pricing error I paid something closer to 12CAD/ea)

• 1x 1x5x6 red oak (30CAD/ea. at the time)

• 6x Amazonbasics drawer pulls, 3” spacing (35CAD for a 25-pack at the time)

I also have access to plywood scraps and offcuts as well as buying consumables like glue, stain and polyurethane and edge banding in bulk.

Reducing Material costs

• The red oak trim can be skipped (bought as S4S, this can be as much as 30CAD just for this board alone!)

• The ¾” plywood on the back side of the faux-wall can be replaced with thinner and/or cheaper material like OSB or even 1/8” hardboard. If you use hardboard, you’ll want to get some strips of 1x2 or something to secure the faux-wall to the real-wall

• By making the drawers out of ½” plywood and/or using ¼” plywood bottoms would reduce plywood cost; also reducing the number and configuration of drawers can have a big impact on this cost

• The soft-closing full-extension slides can be (and should be) swapped for standard full-extension slides; you can reduce the cost even further by using side drawer slides or even friction-wood slides

• Skipping veneer edge banding, drawer pulls or even switching to paint instead of stain can reduce the cost

Tools

I used a huge variety of tools to put this project together with more than a few of them being ‘luxury item’ tools. Given that this project is a glorified collection of boxes with holes cut in them, it can be completed with a really basic selection of tools. Getting plywood cut down to size at the big box store really makes this project more accessible.

• Absolute minimum: drill & jigsaw

  • Technically a jigsaw can do all of the cuts needed, but I would get the big box store to cut the plywood down to size on the panel saw

  • You give up the french-cleat and any rounded edges

  • You’ll probably want a cheap hole-saw kit to cut the larger circular holes

• Adding a circular saw (+ a straight edge guide)

  • You can perform all of the plywood cuts yourself

  • You can also cut all of the framing members to size yourself

• Adding a router (+ flush trim and roundover bits)

  • Now you can ease over all of the edges (roundover) and make sure two surfaces are the same (flush trim)

• Adding a power sander

  • If you are working with nicer plywood this may not be as necessary of a purchase; however it will take the project’s finish to the next level

• Adding a table saw

  • Cutting pieces like drawer panels, cubby dividers, french cleats is much easier/safer to do

• Adding a pinner/nailer (battery, electric or +compressor)

  • Having a pin or brad nailer makes the glue-up process efficient (pins/nails are much cheaper than screws as well)

  • If you’re doing something like the oak trim on the front edge of the desktop, you probably don’t want to see screw holes - a nailer is much easier to work here

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