The tread desk in my closet.. and other fun projects I've done this year.

I mentioned this to a few friends at work the other day, and they got a good laugh out of me describing my office. It's a little odd.. I own two houses, yet live in a two bedroom apartment. What can I say.. I hate mowing grass and dealing with home maintenance.

 Anyways, I needed an office when I started working from home. I had previously used a standing desk in my cube, which was quite common in my previous employments. When I decided to work from home - I knew I had to have a tread desk (The noise had prevented me from doing it in an office environment) in my home office.

 I had a rather large walk in closet that stems off the master suite, so I turned it into my office. One of the things I noticed from working in cube land was that I never had enough writing space, so most of my office became a whiteboard.

You can pick up whiteboard paint at your local hardware store or online at Amazon: Whiteboard Paint

 It's cheap and makes for a washable surface. It doesn't do well on textured walls, but other than that - it's awesome!

Second.. I wanted a standing desk. I couldn't find one that was an exact fit, so I built one. Plus, this allowed me to make the surfaces of the desk a whiteboard. (See the pics below) All total, it cost about $100 for the desk materials. Third.. I needed a treadmill - so I found one on amazon for cheap ($200 - Amazon Treadmill) and built an enclosure around it.

The wood for the enclosure cost about $50 total.. so I ended up with a small cozy office that has lots of writing space, four monitors and all the walking I do should help offset the late night drinking and rockstar lifestyle!

The initial framing of the enclosure around the desk:

4 - 2x4's @ 2.50
12 - 1x4's @ 1.25
Box of 2" molding nails @ 3.50
Box of #10 2" screws @ 2.00


I used .49 sqft fake wood flooring to cover it - it was about $15.00 for a box at Floor & Decor

The finished enclosure with flooring overlay:

The semi-finished office:

Cozy.. Just enough for one dev

The whiteboard desk surface

Just for my buddy Randall.. I've thrown in a picture of my projector gaming screen too. You can't go wrong with 300" of gaming bliss. (All projects were done in a weekend.. so it's not a big time sync)

Also.. One other fun weekend project - I converted my stock navigation in my 350z Roadster into a tablet config using a Nexus7:

It allows full pc config of the car's board, plus it passes emission checks! Best of both worlds.. Entertains the girlfriend too.. she watches Netflix at the car meets.

Just some of the fun little projects that I've encountered over the last year - Always tinkering with things that are probably ok as they are, but never good enough for me. If it's not broken, add some more features.