House of Eratosthenes

The headline is wife-language for “could you please build me a desk like that?” My reward for finally finishing the desk-project. That translation, in itself, is another representation of something else, that could be further translated: “I take back every eyeball-roll I ever did since you started, you are the King Stud of homemade desks.” The go-live date was in early afternoon, on the 31st of December. I didn’t plan it that way, it just turned out I burned all of 2015 on the project, minus a handful of hours…and a double-armload of other projects.

Second Design:
This time, we’re serious enough to
buy materials

The back-story goes all the way to when we closed on the house, a year and a half ago. A homemade desk was already in the project pile. This never evolved past the blueprint stage, until six months ago when I had a setback that invalidated the plans. “Natalya,” the homebuilt Sandybridge PC around which the new desk was designed, finally made her opinion known about my non-existent computer-cleaning regimen by…well, catching fire. Kinda. She put out an awful lot of smoke anyway. I had to play it safe by immediately pulling out all the power cords, and not inspecting her since. The backups were already functional and in place, so we didn’t have any data drama. Just all the other drama: Have to get a new computer, have to scrub the blueprints, start with new ones…

The new computer, “Sergei,” is a Broadwell NUC. This is not exactly a home-built, more of a factory-built but bare bones. These are wonderful little units, about the size of two tuna fish sandwiches stacked on top of each other. You have to score a hard drive, laptop memory and an OS, so you’re looking at somewhere around $700 by the time you’re done. I worked the project of just getting the computer to go from about mid-July, after Natalya’s meltdown, to three months later during which time I monopolized the dining room table with my Lenovo Yoga 11 unit for all computing tasks. Mrs. Freeberg was the embodiment of patience during this time. Probably because she knew the “battle bridge” situation was as aggravating to me as it was to her, if not even more so.

The keyboard tray
turned out nicely

I remember it was eleven months past our receipt of the miter saw, when I finally installed it on the work bench, fired it up and started cutting. I remember saying so to someone. This would place that stage of the project around November. The saw turned out to be as good as gold, although I’m sure there are superior models available for more money. What we’ve got is good enough. The keyboard tray turned out to be as solid as a brick.

In a departure from Natalya’s desk design, I abandoned the roll-out keyboard in favor of a stationary build. I had a flash of sanity that these devices are fragile by nature, and therefore don’t belong on a piece of furniture you intend to last a decade plus. Also, that roll-out keyboards don’t actually do me any good.

By now, the plans were sufficiently solid that I could cut some of the planks to the proper length and begin staining them. Hence the complaint that is the title of this post. This is Kona, just one shade lighter than Ebony, several notches darker than Walnut or Mahogany. It’s consistent with the overall design, which labors toward the objective that is a rhetorical question: What if men really did rule the world? How different would computer desks be?

The desk is dark — a man’s concern about colors, mostly has to do with things that don’t give you a headache when you look at them while recovering from a hangover. And, at the Freeberg Manor, space is at a premium. Those are the two salient facts here. So, plank after plank for the new desk, went onto a carefully apportioned section of the garage floor, with cardboard underneath to protect the concrete, and received their staining of Kona. No more than one or two at a time. The blueprints were just barely mature enough by then to allow for this.

Bracing the left and right sides
against each other

One advantage of homebuilt furniture is that you can make it fit just so. The allocated space for this item is 54″ wide by 35″ deep. The design calls for the planks to reach all the way across, left side to right side, so that math is easy: 54 minus 0. Another advantage of this is that you can build them where they go, as in, when the finished product is too large to fit through the doorway. And that applies here. It makes things incredibly awkward, when you engage in this “ship in a bottle” construction, but at least you can accommodate.

But, awkward it was. As in, with December underway and Christmas coming, we entirely lost the use of our home office because of my desk building shenanigans. Fortunately, our yuletide plans had to do with road travel. We were looking forward to the junior member of our household, who throughout the year isn’t even in the house, arriving by train. Then with the younger generation in tow we would proceed Northward, almost up to the Canadian border, to celebrate the holiday with the older generation. Fun times. Means there’s no tree…but there is a lot of planning involved, some of it on the home computer.

Throughout this chapter, Sergei hummed along happily, in his badass sandwich-sized self, kinda floating along on top of a big pile of cords and wires under the old desk. Updating spreadsheets, making hotel reservations, writing e-mails following up on train tickets, et al. And, arguing about planning. I suppose that gets into a whole different subject. Why are some people afraid of planning anything? But I digress…

Or do I? Building a desk is all about planning things isn’t it? It’s the difference between ending up with something you can use, versus ending up with a piece of crap. Hmmm…I sense a theme in something that was supposed to be without theme…I suppose life is like that.

The assembly process in the home office

I was grateful to have the younger Freeberg generation here for the few hours and days. The desk-building project became an inter-generational thing for a bit — which is something it needed to be, since fastening the planks was not a one-man operation. This is the most controversial part of the newer blueprint, it calls for a “picnic table style” top, making use of a dozen pine studs. Seems everyone has questions about that. What the heck? How do you write on such a desk? Well…that brings us back to the rhetorical question that drives the design, what would computer desks look like if men really did run the world? Perhaps, if men ran the world 150 years ago the way feminists say, desks would still have smooth writing surfaces. Regardless, though, it is not 150 years ago, now is now…and how often do you actually write on a desk? Be honest.

Besides, the keyboard tray, as you can tell from the pictures, is not only as durable as an iron ingot, it’s enormous. It’s 34+1/2″ wide by 13+1/2″ deep. In practice, if I have to do something like that, I just move the keyboard out of the way. Which I find myself doing, much more often, for the purpose of using a second computer simultaneously, compared to doing it for the purpose of writing with pen and paper. Writing with pen and paper hardly ever happens. The picnic-table top design has turned out to be a net win.

But of course, the far bigger win was the singular feature around which the entire desk was designed: The beverage pillar, with the beer-bottle opener and metal canister to catch the caps. It should have been the very first thing on your mind when you saw the question “What would computer desks look like if men really did run the world?” And, there is your evidence that we don’t. We never really did. You want a computer desk with a beer bottle opener on the front, the way the Good Lord intended, you have to build it.

Or, depending on your point of view, maybe men do run the world and the Good Lord intends for us to build our own things. Either answer works.

In the end, I’m pleasantly surprised 2015 saw a workable conclusion to the project. I would have lost money betting on this, and in truth, if there was any term of time in which I was honestly thinking to myself “I see light at the end of the tunnel, I think we’ll make it!” — it wasn’t very much time at all. Just like any other hardware project, I suppose…you run back to the hardware store a few times, chastising yourself that three trips should’ve been two, and two trips should’ve been one. People wonder if you know what you’re doing, and then…eventually you win. Just keep plugging away at the problem. Life is a lot like that, too.

The “finished” product
(click to embiggen)

Perhaps the happiest aspect of this item is that its construction, and launch, involves so many memories that could outlast the furniture itself. Or, since it’s built so solidly and so well, with this construction-credo of “it’ll be here in one piece when the sun goes nova,” let’s amend that to say the memories have a decent shot at doing this. The eighteen-year-old so-called “boy” showed up just before our road trip to go see his grandfather, so there was no time for him to do anything with the desk at that point other than look at it. Early on the morning before I was to fetch him from the train station, I got an e-mail from my brother with the one subject line you never want to see: “Dad fell.” Yup…Friday the eighteenth, that’s four days before we were to arrive for the Christmas celebrations, my Dad fell and broke his hip. Looked like a Christmas in the hospital for sure. We called to ask if we should revise the trip, maybe head up a little bit earlier, and that was a negative so we stuck to the schedule. Against all expectations, the doctor discharged Dad from the hospital the exact day we arrived. This surprised everybody involved, especially those among us who had actual experience with oldsters falling and breaking hips. Miracles of technology, and just maybe, miracles of prayer.

December 2015, for us, is twenty pounds of potatoes crammed in a ten-pound bag. We held off on watching the new James Bond movie until the young man could join us, and we also managed to get the new Star Wars movie in the mix as well. Helped out with making the Bellingham house wheelchair-accessible for Dad, came back home, scooted the new desk back in its designated space in time for the New Year’s festivities. Lots of plans, some of them came to fruition, some did not. The ferry ride up in Washington State obviously couldn’t happen. Back here in California, the “take the S&W pistol up into the hills and teach those wine bottles a lesson” exercise didn’t happen. I’m more regretful of the missed opportunity to burn gunpowder, than about the ferry ride. We’ll see how Dad’s doing at some later time, for that. We’ll spend a few rounds in the hills, later. What can’t happen now can happen later. Of course that isn’t certain, but what is? You hope for the best and you prepare for the worst.

Oh you thought I was going somewhere specific with this? Sorry to disappoint, this one’s just a busy concoction of how things have been going lately. Desk, planning, life, life’s exigencies, plans getting disrupted, plans coming to fruition anyway…planes-trains-automobiles, movies, guns, what-if-men-ran-the-world. Somewhere in all of the above is a valuable lesson for us all, I suppose. Probably has something to do with the old adage about changing what you can, accepting what you can’t, and God granting you the wisdom to know the difference.

Remaining to be done:

Cable management;
Planks #10 and #11
The “virtual plank #12” in five pieces, allowing for 2 extra monitors;
Said monitors;
Finish staining (some of this done since the last pic was taken);
Arms for the front-left, front-center and front-right speakers.

But all that can wait. Now we proceed to my spectacularly patient wife’s (cherry-wood finish) desk. But gee…part of the reason I built this computer desk, was there were other projects that were supposed to happen on the computer. Well, I suppose in 2016 I’ll have to find a way to do more than one thing at once. Again. And so it goes…

Excuse me but it is not just “finish” but “fit and finish.” Kindly to get back to work and emprettify.
- vanderleun | 01/10/2016 @ 10:12
Sheesh.
Here’s how a skilled craftsman, with enough “specialty” tools, and a shop in the barn, and ANOTHER shop, just for metal things (like cars) does it.
Two dual drawer file cabinets (one with a “fireproof” locking drawer), and a hollow core door.
The “advanced” model used 1.25″ thick oak (tractor) trailer planking for the surface, that one can (always piloted) screw ANYTHING on top of, OR under.
- CaptDMO | 01/10/2016 @ 10:42
I like mine.
- mkfreeberg | 01/10/2016 @ 13:53
Pffft…as well you should! You designed it …to fit. Spent hours on it, and the bottle opener….
THAT’S the “….with frickin’ lasers on their heads…” BRILLIANT!
And you NOW own more tools….win/win.
WARNING: Do NOT garner even a HINT of a reputation as “that guy” (with all the RIGHT tools) in the neighborhood .. “He can make/repair ANYTHING!”.
At LEAST until you’re solidly retired, OR your neighbors have “home brew”/ inside information/ of some sort to barter.
(I think my favorite payola is the wild game/fowl sausage, delivered STILL too hot to sensably eat, from the bbq)
- CaptDMO | 01/10/2016 @ 22:00
Ah…well, I have that reputation within the household. There isn’t much use forming an opinion about whether that’s just as bad, it is what it is. I’m good with it, the Queen of my castle does her share of household chores and deserves her own desk.

The brilliance, I think, is in choosing the project. Computer desk? How many hours do you spend “maintaining” a computer desk after it’s built, compared to the hours you spend using it? It’s closer to zero than such a ratio computed for anything else in the whole house, right? And everything is in the computer. The work, the movies, the coffee, the beer…why, that’s the big four right there. I’m a bit mad at myself for not having done it sooner, that’s one sign of a wisely chosen project.
- mkfreeberg | 01/11/2016 @ 05:55
Building to fit is a superb idea.

I had a desk I loved that I sacrificed when we put together The Lad’s room – it was too big to fit up the narrow stairs. (How old was this thing? I bought it at *Caldor.*) Since I’m not quite handy enough to build my own furniture, I was going to be stuck – but I found a suitable replacement for a song at a garage sale, and old-school upright with a fold-out tray, all its internal drawers present, all hardware intact.

Well, upright as it was, the blippin’ thing barely fit up those old narrow stairs. There’s a 90 degree turn a short way up, and if you get stuck there, you’re not coming back down without a parachute. I had to remove the banisters and I pulled something in my back, but I finally got the dratted thing up there.

The Serlingesque twist ending: the stairs are actually IN The Lad’s room. He goes to sleep by 8 pm at the latest. Thus I’ve used the desk maybe six times in two years, working off my laptop on the living room couch. Shoulda left the thing right down there.
- nightfly | 01/11/2016 @ 15:26

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“Mine Won’t Be That Dark”Sunday, January 10th, 2016

“Mine Won’t Be That Dark”
Sunday, January 10th, 2016