A work surface: followup

[darkemeralds]

I put my hinged table project on hold because this whole other almost-full time, intensive, non-paying job of writing intervened, but today after "work" (I shouldn't put that in quotes--it's work) I finally finished it.



Just hanging around:


In service:


It's...not bad, functionally. Standing-height, reasonably sturdy. I could have spent more time perfecting the paint job, and it's not that easy to reach under and extend the triangular supports, but whatever.

If I had it to do over again, I'd probably opt not to, but hey! It'll come in handy, and it's not in the way, and plus, I learned all about strap-toggles and the vagaries of terribly uneven old plaster walls.

Total cost: about $75.

Comments

[lycomingst]

Oh, it folds down. Clever. If it were mine, it'd be covered in random papers in no time. Paper just sort collects around me.

[darkemeralds]

I know the feeling! I'm motivated in this case not to cover it up because it really does take up half the living room when it's open. My thought is that maybe, during a sewing project, I could leave it extended for a couple of days at a time, but it just takes up too much room to be out permanently.

Also--and I didn't anticipate this--it's absolutely invisible in the dark, and I would HATE to be running into it. I'm thinking it needs some LED light strips or something. For safety. Like, I dunno, a runway or something.

[ravurian]

Did you install stop blocks on the underside of the door for the triangular supports to rest against? That might give it some more stability. You could also maybe install some kind of makeshift string/pulley system so that as you lift the desk surface into place it pulls the 'legs' out with it. Maybe. Looks good! V well done.

How goes the work?

[darkemeralds]

GMTA! I was literally doing this ten minutes before I saw your comment:


I put pins on the tops of the triangular supports, and they slot into metal nuts in the underside of the table. There was a hell of a lot of level-plumb-and-square-ing to consider, and I didn't get it all quite right. I shall continue to fiddle with it. But it's working.

[branchandroot]

Oh, that worked out very nicely! And it goes really well with that wall paint. If at any future time you want to finish off the knob/latch holes, wood putty will fill in nicely for a half inch or so, and takes paint well once sanded lightly. You may wish to stuff the remaining space with, like, twisted up newspaper first, though, speaking from experience.

[ranunculus]

Agreed on all points!

[darkemeralds]

Thank you. I trust your engineering mind!

[darkemeralds]

I thought about filling the hole in the door, but as it turns out, it makes a very handy lifting aid. But now that I think about it, it might be a useful thing to patch it over with a magnet. Then, when I'm sewing, the pins and needles could go there...

[branchandroot]

Yeah, maybe if you set the magnet into the top and kept the hole in the bottom to lift with? Best of both worlds.

...though, in that case, I'd /definitely/ patch and paint the latch hole in the side, because otherwise you could lose some pins down there that would be hard to get back out.

[darkemeralds]

Excellent ideas. Thank you!

[emungere]

Hiii. This is not about your work surface (although it looks pretty neat!), but I was wondering if you would be willing to beta a Lewis thing for me by any chance? (You watch Lewis, right? I think I remember that.) It's only very vaguely Lewis/Hathaway, about 20k words.

[darkemeralds]

I'd love to. A lot depends on your schedule. PM me and let's talk.

[emungere]

would you email me? dw keeps logging me out every five seconds. emungere at gmail :)

[tehomet]

I'm catching up with DW!

Wow, your new bedroom looks amazing! I love the way you made the stencil design continue into the headboard. Nifty. The door is gorgeous too. I was looking at the door's before picture and thinking it looked nice, what was the point of changing it? And then the after shots are so much more glamorous, and so much more you.

Thank you for the link to that excellent article by Heidi Cullinan.

And thank you for the hazelnut and chocolate in the blender revelation recipe. Yum!

I really must get a high-powered blender one of these days. I only have a regular one and kale is not sufficiently pulverised or disguised by it. :)
Your post on ephemeralization was a fantastic read. I looked up from it and saw my surroundings in a new way.

I love the fold-down-when-not-in-use work surface. (I have a desk that I dearly love that I got off a kind soul on Freecycle but it does take up literally a third of my room. And it's cast iron so there's no way to make it smaller.) The pulley system looks good.

[darkemeralds]

Hi there! I love it when you drop by and catch up. I need to do the same. It's been over a month, and the guilt is beginning to weigh on me.

I don't know how household appliances are marketed across the pond, but that little Nutri-Bullet blender of mine was under $100 on Amazon. I've been using it at least twice a day for a few months now and so far it's going strong. Now that the weather is hot, I've been slushing up lots of ice cubes, and it works like a champ. (No device that I've heard of will quite liquefy kale. I have to add a good bit of water. Also: drinking it through a straw is the only way to go. It's almost like getting it through a feed tube that way. LOL!)

I can't even imagine how much a cast iron desk must weigh! Sounds like something to hide under when the big one hits, though.

Thanks for checking in!