Nerd Corner

Behold, the efforts of several months of labor: my basement nerd corner:

Due to my hobby and school projects often monopolizing our dining table, my wife and I agreed that if I could find a desk for cheap, we could rearrange things in a basement a bit and give me some space where my sprawling mess could live.  In a week or so of hunting Cragislist I found this "L" desk for $50.  The desk is an oak monster and the effort in getting it downstairs dulled my enthusiasm for the project somewhat. I got all the computer stuff re-situated and then at a much more relaxed pace re-organized the material in my old desk into the new drawers.  This evolved into a culling and scanning activity where the amount of physical paperwork I had on hand was significantly reduced.

A month or two ago I realized the utility of the desk was significantly reduced due to all of my electronic components and tools being in boxes rather than readily available.  I began a hunt for shelving options and, again, with my wife's input and guidance, found a way to construct some ugly yet functional shelves with scrap lumber we had on hand.   The result is shown on the left, resting on the desk and almost reaching the ceiling.  Another Criagslist find got me the "mailbox" shelving on top and after spending WAY TOO much on fishing tackle boxes, I was able to sort and store virtually all of my components.

The component storage taking up the top half of the shelving, I left myself some work space in the bottom half and put a shelf half way up for miscellaneous tools.  To store the rest of my tools I cut up a dowel into pegs and drilled holes everywhere I pleased, hanging tools throughout the shelving.  For lighting, I purchased a plug-in work light and screwed it into the bottom shelf.

Today I added two small finishing touches.    The blue patches on left is masking tape holding up some cheap red/green LED lighting in a very ugly manner to provide a small amount of light for the tools on the bottom shelf.  I also added some hooks to store my banana cables behind the shop light.

Having this work space has been fully wonderful and I am some thankful to my understanding and supportive wife in this.  There may come a day when we don't have the space for something like this but for now, it is a great blessing in my life.  There is enough space that projects can live on the desk and not interfere with the rest of our daily lives.  My wife gets a cleaner kitchen table and I get space to nerd out.  As they say, its a win/win.