My desk

Nothing spectacular. I wanted to answer a friend’s blogpost but realized the need for an image, so here goes my minor Ikea hack.

Back in December 2008, I needed a bigger desk and wanted to have an L-shaped setup, so I can work on the corner and have room for crap on both sides. I had just moved, so getting stuff at IKEA seemed obvious, although in hindsight a wood store certainly has a better range of workplates.

I couldn’t afford the pre-fabricated L-shaped workplate of Ikea’s Galant, so I combined these VIKA work plates. (Actually due to my room size, the rectangluar plate was subsequently sawed in half to limit the wing size.)

The “problem” was leg freedom. As I intended to work in the elbow of the L-shape, I couldn’t use the “common” pole placement, which sees a pole at each corner of a workplate (red circles). 57cm right at the front edge was definitely going to be too narrow.

I ended up installing the poles where the workplates meet, which also reduces the overall pole count. Now I have 100cm width between the poles and total leg freedom. Yay!

Actually I would have preferred a darker color, but shied away from painting, which would have required an additional pass to the protective varnish that already took me more than a weekend, as I did both sides, upper side double layered, and each layer has to dry 8+ hours and be polished.

Bottom line, I spent maybe 100 Euros on the materials and tools (IKEA stuff plus wood varnish, brush and the metal connectors). As a weekend project it was sort of fun, but the next time I’d get a professionally painted and varnished workplate.