The Mega Desk

My girlfriend and I share a loft as our home office. It's 8x12 feet, but due to it being exposed to the level below the 8-foot wide wall is the only sensible spot for a desk — but no standard desk spans 8 feet. And putting two desks against different walls would eat the room alive. So we needed one big desk. A mega desk. Now if you Google "8 foot desk," you'll quickly run out of results, especially if you filter by price. The closest thing is the IKEA countertop hack, where you slap a kitchen countertop on Alex bookshelves and call it a day. I considered it. But they're not deep enough, and I was also too nervous about committing to a single (rather low) fixed height. I wanted a standing desk — even though, mine hasn't budged since I got it. (Note to self: stand tomorrow.)

There are plenty of standing legs online, but none that supported the 8 foot width. I decided to build the tabletop first and figure out the legs later.

We got our hardwood from MacBeath Hardwood in Berkeley. We chose a dark burnt ash because the grain was gorgeous and we were looking for a darker wood.

But buying hardwood and having an 8-foot desk are two very different things. Luckily, through friends we found an avid woodworker with a proper shop out in the East Bay. So we made a day of it — cutting, joining with a Domino, glue-up, sanding, and staining. It's deeply satisfying to have built what sit down at to build now. Your hands touched every step of it.

Due to curing, we had to return the following day. I showed up like any good client: with scope creep. I overnighted a drawer and wanted to install it on the underside. Our woodworker friend was concerned, but we got it done. It was unnatural to be on the other side of scope creep, but I've earned it.

Now I had an 8-foot hardwood tabletop on my office floor and no legs. I found these dual-motor legs on Amazon where I believed the distance between the legs could be extended wide enough for the job. They arrived. I mounted them. And then as I feared — the control cable that connects the two motors wasn't long enough for Mega Desk. I stared at the cable for a while and seriously considered splicing it. But I don't really know what that entails, and if I messed up I'd have no cable. But then the internet did its beautiful thing. Some guy on Etsy — JACKreationsUS — is making the exact extension cables you need for this. I zoomed in on product photos as far as I could to compare pin layouts, and they matched. I was even able to order a custom length.

If I did it again, I'd glue up a rotated board underneath for added support. Eight feet is a lot of unsupported wood. For now, I've got a filing cabinet supporting the middle while not in standing mode (always).

And that's mega desk. We have no complaints — we're not at the desk at the same time all that often, which probably helps. It gives us our own workspace without filling the room. When we are at it together, we sit a little closer than coworkers in an open office, but isn't that what partners are for. Overall, it makes the room so much better than any two-desk arrangement would have.