In my quest to set up a home computer station, I realized I needed a proper desk at which to place it. I'm quite particular about desks, especially the ergonomics of the height of the keyboard. In my design, I'm placing the main desk top at 25 inches above the floor, which is about the height of a typical keyboard tray. This is, of course, awkwardly low to be used as a writing desk, but that is not the task for which this is designed. To boot, the low height will be better for small children (for which it may indeed be suitable as a writing desk).

I juggled the design in my head for a few days, making a series of sketches. One design consideration is that the height of the monitor needs to be more at a typical desk height, therefore I decided it would need a small shelf at standard 30 inch height. Furthermore, I don't want to just set the CPU on the floor under the desk; I value having legroom, or at least footroom in this case. There is a shelf with 4 inches of clearance off the floor for your toes to tuck under, which should hopefully make it just that much nicer to sit at (similar to the toekick under kitchen counters). With these constraints, and the limited joinery I have the patience to do, I settled on this final design.

It turned out that for the frame, I had two 2x3s sitting around, which provided almost exactly the right amount of material. I had the other boards as scrap sitting around, and the only thing I needed to buy was the desktop itself, which is a 20x36 inch stain-grade laminated board for about $20.

The first step was to rip the 2x3 to remove the rounded corners and imperfections. Then cutting to length, and Polish-planing the dado joints. The shelf support is attached with a bridle joint, made by ripping the piece vertically against the fence. The design is a take-down desk; it can be taken back apart into flat-pack pieces. All joints for the legs are glued, but the horizontal surfaces are attached with bolts from underneath, and the back brace is attached with an angled lap joint secured by bolts (all bolts are 1/4-20 and go into a threaded insert).

This all seems a bit overkill for a piece made of essentially scrap wood, but I simply cannot tolerate wobbly furniture. And my main computer desk is also a take-down, which has had to make the move with us up into the mountains, so I see a definite advantage to designing with that in mind.

My daughter insisted on a red stain, and fortunately I had a half pint of Colonial Maple Minwax remaining, so that is what it is. Here is the finished product.

I think the next project is making a bench for this desk.