If you have access to UK TV, you may have seen the “Grand Designs” series. Each episode covers a project to construct or refurbish a house; and the project is always ambitious, risky and usually hugely expensive.
Those involved have usually made some money in London and wish to escape to the country.
“Look Fiona, a pile of bricks that used to be a shithouse. Let’s spend half a million pounds and turn it into a five bedroom house.”
Ya Nigel, let’s do it! And I’ll have a baby in the middle of the project just to make things more complicated"
And they do (build the house and have a baby). It often takes more than a year and the complications are many (just the house, not the baby), but the end result is usually a masterpiece of design and craftsmanship and I am always deeply impressed. It takes foresight, design flair and considerable nerve to pull off a project like this, all attributes I have in very limited supply.
Which is why I am struggling with a table.
Our back room used to be a bedroom until we took out the bed, blocked off the access to the bathroom, and stuffed it full of computers, books and crap. It is now known as the computer room, although “junk store” would describe it better. And something needs to be done.
For a year or so I have had a plan to empty the room, rip out the wood floor which is the worse for wear after suffering three floods following water leaks, and install some elegant furniture to replace the assorted plastic and laminated follies that currently inhabit the space.
Project progress was slow for many months, limited to no more than an hour looking at floor tiles. Then progress stopped after I broke my back. But now there really is no excuse, especially as I told she who must be obeyed that I would refurbish the room before I bought my Mac Pro. Then I bought my Mac Pro; and the room still looks as if something large and angry has recently laid it to waste.
The key component of the new room, at least in my eyes, the computer table. This is to be three metres long (give or take a few centimetres) and, through a miracle of design, will hide all the cables whilst providing an ideal platform for am iMac and a Mac Pro with two monitors. And so I have been “designing” it.
Naturally I managed to put off the start of the design process by insisting I have the necessary tools for the job. This involved a trip to the top floor of the Friendship supermarket which is a an Aladdin’s cave of stationery supplies. However, this particular Aladdin has a drink and drugs problem which results in products being scattered at random across hundreds of square metres of floor space. So it took me half an hour to find a ruler, and another half hour to find a plastic setsquare, which was hidden away behind some coloured paper for no other reason than to annoy shoppers like me. And more time for some squared paper and 2B pencils etc etc.
So, back from the cave of delights with my bag of goodies and I lay them out on the table. Now what? Better measure the room I think, so I seek out my tape measure and, aided by the cats who think it is a game, I make some measurements. According to my calculations, one wall is four centimetres longer than the opposite wall; but it’s close enough and I put the difference down to cat-induced error. I plot the room on my squared paper and stand back to admire the results.
In fact I stand so far back that I find myself in another room playing on the Xbox, and it is several days before I return to my master plan. In the meantime, she who must be obeyed has been impressed that I am “making progress”, progress that I have hinted at by the simple act of moving the pencils to different positions every day.
So, finally to the table. There will be a wooden (or stainless steel) supporting structure, and the top will be marble. Or granite. Or glass. There will be cable trays underneath to hide the miles of cabling that accompany any computer installation. There will be drawers somewhere in which vital accessories can be stored. There will be holes for cables to poke through. It will be flush with the wall, or maybe there will be a wood surround. There will be accompanying shelves for printers and NAS drives and scanners and routers, all of which are differing shapes and come with power supplies. It will be so high and so deep and….. so many bloody things to think about that I put down my recently sharpened pencil and sighed deeply. Bet it was easier to plan a moon mission than design this table.
Today I went to the masonry shop hoping that they would limit my options.
“You want a three metre by seventy five centimetre slab of granite? No problem, ready in three days, although it will weigh several tonnes and you will have to pick it up yourself. And you expect your carpenter to build a frame that will be millimetre perfect to accomodate it……”
They sniggered. I whimpered.
Instead of a computer room I am now wondering if I am at least capable of designing a shithouse out of a pile of bricks. Maybe she who must be obeyed would not notice the difference. Less cables too.
Comments 🔗
2009-03-26| Jock saysIKEA are very good at designing rooms just like you want …. you don’t need to atually buy their stuff … just pretend you’re interested and then nick their plans … whilst you are ’thinking about it'.
2009-03-27| Billy saysmmm, you are off my tender list …
2009-03-27| Spike saysGreat idea Jock, except there is no Ikea in Thailand. In fact my computer is currently residing on an Ikea chipboard and scaffolding contraption which I purchased in Den Haag a lifetime ago.
2009-03-27| Santi saysWell i guess you can go to Malaysia in your a giant truck.
2009-03-27| Billy saysI just add another desk and/or shelf space each time stuff becomes overwhelming.. I now have 4 desks ….