A Home Built Office Desk

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The doors overlap in the corner, so one will be at a low typing height and the other at a more comfortable writing and paper-shuffling level. Height can be maintained at open ends by building spacers to fit between the door and the filing cabinets, shelves or whatever endsupports you employ.

Optional added furbelows that I have built into door-desks at one time or another, and that are shown in some of the following illustrations, include:

a simple plywood cabinet with shelves and (optional) doors. You can build your own or get one ready-made by stacking those colorful $7 to $15 plastic milk crates found in any WalMart, or $15 to $30 wooden boxes made for modular furniture and sold at "unfinished" outlets. drawers (homemade or purloined from old or unused wardrobes or drawer sets) held under the table, with ready-made metal slide sets that cost about $5 from most building supply outlets or woodworkers supply stores or catalogs. a sliding pencil drawer in the space between overlapping doors in the corner. a keyboard shelf mounted on drawerslides under the table where the computer sits.

The Power Seat

First, however, pick the most comfortable office chair you can find and afford. It should have a seat/back angle of 90° or a bit more to force you to sit in an upright, "spine-healthy" position. It should be height-adjustable so you can sit with your feet flat on the floor rather than dangling. (It can adjust in any way:expensively, with a screw-threaded center post for infinite variability, with adjustable casters, or cheaply with a pin through holes in the pedestal.)

The chair back should support the small of your back rather than the shoulders. You may find that a good secretary's chair with a small, adjustable back pad forces you into a more upright position—which is significantly less luxurious, but much better for your spine than an exec utive's chair that you can loll back in to put your feet on the desk.

Layout

Building a desk from scratch, you can arrange it at any level you choose rather than having to accept the one-height-fits all of commercial desks. Adjust your chair (or if the perfect chair is still a dream, add pillows to the seat of a regular desk or table chair) until, with back straight, chin up, and rump firmly against the chair back, your feet are comfortably flat on the floor.

Now, while still sitting in the chair and without reference to any table, arrange hands and arms in the most comfortable typing or writing position. Keep your wrists straight. With a steel tape or yardstick, measure the distance from the floor to your fingertips. Subtract thickness of your keyboard from that height and jot it down. Now measure the distance from the floor to the bottom of your elbow. If there is a great difference, you may be angling your arms (or usually your wrists) up or down too much. Alter your arm angle to match the elbow height and see if this isn't better.

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