So
we've done my office and it's looking pretty good.
So what's next? Everyone?
My name is Will from Going Awesome Places and recently I've gotten really obsessed
about creating awesome workspaces, so much so that I decided to take
on a brand new project, my wife's office space.
So here's the deal.
My wife doesn't really use this office
a whole lot and prefers to work on the couch or in the kitchen.
I think a big part of it is because she's never really had a proper setup.
It's kind of just been well,
dumping ground for various things like documents, receipts and things.
Here's what we're working with.
You might recognize this tabletop material from my first home office tour review.
This is part of a set that I'm currently
using, but only the main table component with the sip sand desk I have.
I've migrated it over to here.
It's a serviceable table but is quite closed off and doesn't offer any features.
Her chair.
Well, another hammy down special for Mikea.
It's technically a mess chair but isn't very good.
And there's a bunch of miscellaneous
plastic drawers for arts and crafts and the whole row of other documents
in a square shelling system that wasn't designed for documents and binders.
So when thinking about this new office,
I wanted to test out another Canadian company.
Last time, Ergonofis from Montreal was the backbone of my home office,
but this time I'm going with Effydesk out of British Columbia.
So you could say we're going from East Coast to West Coast.
So this is everything that got delivered to our home.
That's a lot of boxes,
I know and ridiculously heavy, but it managed to come here all thanks
to camp are and yes, shipping is free Canada wide.
The first step was to clean the room and move everything out.
Chantel and I then moved all the boxes up one at a time.
Now we're ready to start assembling our new Effydesk
goodies.
The desk is the main part of this set.
So let's start with that now.
I have a big surprise.
Guys, this is the most incredible thing, literally a table top made out
of chopsticks. Chopsticks that would have otherwise gone to waste put together.
I mean, just check out this surface.
I mean, forget carbon neutral.
We're talking about carbon negative here and on top two free chop value coasters.
You can see
all of the layers of the bamboo chopsticks in there with a table surface out.
The next step is to set up the white Effydesk business frame.
This is a three segment dual motor table
that goes a swift 35 mm/second and up to a max height of 50 inches.
Alright, so that is going to be a bit of work.
I was a bit surprised though, by how much assembly is required here,
but at the same time, it wasn't too hard to do since I had
experience with Ergonofis setting this up was a piece of cake.
I just have to treat it like an Ikea
build, following the instructions step by step.
I love that the holes are pre drilled
on the table top, so all you really have to do is line things up first impressions.
It was really nice.
It's not really loud.
It's good this built in as well.
This is the TerraDesk.
Effydesk has partnered with ChopValue,
making it a sustainable source Butcher block tabletop.
This one, in fact, has 10,852 chopsticks
picked up from local restaurants in Vancouver.
How crazy is that?
On top Effydesk donates 10% of its proceeds
of this product to one tree planter have other features.
Well, something you might have noticed is
that this actually comes with a cable tray.
This is huge because I hate how standing
desk companies don't think about building in cable management and with Effydesk.
It's right there.
It also comes with these handy zip ties that tape down underneath your table
to keep your cables tidy and prevent dangling.
The TerraDesk also comes with a grommet built in.
Now you don't have a choice of where you
want it or not to have it at all, but it's in a good spot and includes
a solidly built, all metal grommet accessory.
A sweet feature is the built in control module that sits flush on the tabletop.
This is where you control the standing
desk and best part, it has a built-in USB outlet.
Another nice touch is the silver metal
feet where I expected them to just be plastic.
This table is 55 inches wide,
can hold 300 pounds of weight and comes with 8 years manufacturer's warranty,
which covers the electric motors, control box switch and defects in the frame.
Next is the Effydesk ModernCabinet.
This is a heavy duty of lockable filing
cabinet with three drawers and lockable rolling casters.
There was a much to assemble here other
than the wheels that need to be screwed in.
This complements the TerraDesk perfectly, especially with the white on white frame.
I love the clean lines and functionality.
Wow.
The wheel.
The key comes with folds open.
The three drawers provide a lot of great usable space for organization,
and the wheel on the bottom drawer helps keep it in balance when fully open.
The four main wheels are also lockable to keep it in place.
Finally, the last one is the Effydesk
AeryChair their top of the line ergonomic chair as an upgrade from this Ikea chair.
Like the table, there's a fair bit of assembly required. And hot tip -
you definitely want to keep the box intact
so that you can connect the back with the seat like this.
This is an executive ergonomic mesh office
chair with a breathable mesh back and tons of cushion in the lumbar region,
and the shark comes with a two year warranty.
The AeryChair can be adjusted in so many different ways, starting with the armrest.
It's fully adjustable in multiple
directions, up and down, left and right, forward and back.
Of course, the chair can be raised or lowered by using this lever.
The seat cushion position can also be moved forward or back.
There's a full tilt lock or full recline mode.
The giant lever on the back locks
and unlocks the lumbar support, allowing you to move it up or down,
depending on how much support you like against your back.
Finally, there's the head rest,
which can rotate up or down and also be raised or dropped.
Oh, and the caster wheels also roll really
smoothly on our hardwood, but also on the carpet as well.
We, or rather Chantelle spent the next couple
of weeks cleaning all the things that we had taken out of the room.
This was actually a great opportunity to rethink what was important,
what could be thrown out and to start a better system of organizing files.
Chantelle made some conceptual drawings,
which was really helpful for us to figure out what we needed and ultimately ordered
a ton of things from Amazon and made multiple trips to the local Ikea.
Now we're ready to reveal what it looks like.
Now,
now talk about a complete redesign of the space.
The key to this makeover was that we
didn't want to spend a ton of money on new furniture.
So what we focused on was leveraging what we already had.
It's completely different from how my office is set up because, well,
my wife's needs in a home office is just completely different,
and that was probably the most eye opening part of this whole project.
Let's start from the right side.
This is a basic plastic drawer system on wheels that a lot of people have.
It's three levels, and with so many small things that needed to be organized,
it just made sense to keep one here on the right.
That was low enough that wouldn't
interfere with the desk, but also gave Chantel important access
to the arts and crafts she needed to make it clean.
She took some design paper and covered up the front.
The desk is much simpler to set up when
you don't have to deal with large computer equipment.
I gave Chantelle, my old Londo leather pad,
which the MacBook Air sits on, and also the two ChopValue coasters
to the right, or Ikea organizers because she still wanted to have direct access
to some of her most used items and documents.
To the left is an Ikea Led lamp above the desk.
We also moved over the Pin World Map,
and it really gives the room the color pop that it needed.
The key really was less clutter to let
the tabletop surface of the TerraDesk really shine.
The AeryChair tucks right in for now.
We've kept the chair desk mat, and what's missing is a standing mat.
We made a decision early on to put
the cabinet to the left of the table just because it seemed like it would be easier
to access things compared to tucking it in the right corner.
The height of the cabinet is short enough
so that the standing desk doesn't interfere, but we thought we pull it
a little bit more until left just to be able to use the full service.
Right now we have a two level paper tray for line and blank paper.
Inside the cabinet, the top drawer contains a set of trays
from Ikea for all the small bits and pieces of stationary.
The second drawer is for oversized paper, for things like sketching and water
coloring and things like a paper cutter and three hole punch.
The last drawer is the filing cabinet, and she was able to convert many of her
binder style filing to the new hanging folder style, and finally, the book case.
No, these aren't the Ikea Kallax.
In fact, I have no idea where these come
from because there are really strange eleven inch size, which means it doesn't
work with letter size paper, and there aren't any custom organizers for them.
So what we did was we stacked two
of the two by two units on top of each other to create this mix shift book case.
Since my wife has so many different assortment of things,
she actually found a really creative way to mix and match different boxes,
trays and baskets to make it work, organize, and look not too cluttered.
This actually worked out really, really well.
On the top.
We stuck on a calendar and corkboard
to complete the space with everything in place.
Now we can talk about my impressions
of the Feds products we put in place that anchor the office space.
First, the sit-stand TerraDesk, the surface and ChopValue tabletop made
out of reclaimed and recycled chopsticks, is stunning,
and the spotlight of everything you see it's eye popping and also has
the unexpected warm and calming effect to the space.
Whereas my office is very much about dark colors and wood.
One thing we did notice, though, was that the surface itself isn't
perfectly flat, so if you run your hands through it, you'll feel the joints
of the chopstick blocks and their imperfections and bumps,
most notably even microfiber cloths can snag ever so slightly in certain areas.
The frame and controls work how it's supposed to, and it does it well.
Compared to Ergonofis, I actually prefer how their three segment
dual motor frame works when you press up or down.
There's a gradual acceleration that actually makes it feel more slick.
Although I guess you could say it's a tad
slower because it doesn't start going full speed right away.
The memory keys work well,
although one thing to note is that because it is a built in controller
into the table, you only get three memory spots instead of the standard four.
Setting memory positions is really easy, and so are the min and max height limits.
In terms of handling weight, it certainly handled my full weight
with no hesitation. And that is a good ride! For stability,
you can see some rocking when shaking it
front to back, but literally it was very solid.
It's certainly more stable,
lowered than raised, but that's par for the course when it comes to standing us.
I think I would have liked to have seen
more stability, especially with my rocking test, but not a deal breaker here.
Collision control also works.
This is me trying to hit it to simulate a collision as it's coming up,
and as you can see, it stops and goes back down two inches.
It does require some force, though, so a gentle nudge or push won't trigger it.
Use the desk a little too much,
and it'll also throw a hot warning to protect itself.
As you saw earlier, the table surface has a grommet built in,
which is a nice and clean way to feed cables through, although we'll only have
probably the MacBook Air charging cable go through there.
Chantelle especially loves the fact that it has a USB Port built in.
This is super handy because for her she doesn't have a monitor or laptop
permanently plugged in, so anytime she needs to charge something,
this is really nice to have now the cable management.
As I said before, I love that this comes with a trade.
It's the same as the Amazon one by MonoPrice
I had originally bought from my setup.
This comes with it and how forward thinking is that.
But there were some unexpected issues with the standing desk.
You really only want one cable running out to the wall and have all your electronics
plugged into the power bar, which in this case fits on the tray.
But in this configuration you start
running into problems where you have blocks that are too big.
The Ikea lamp has a pretty tall block
and the 30 Watt block from Apple is big as well.
Coupled with the fact that the cables
themselves are straight and when you try to mount the tray back on, you can't. It
hits the tabletop surface and you can't go any further.
So what I have to do is basically find
an old iPhone block to replace Ikea's and also purchase a right angle USB-C cable.
With this, there's just enough space to screw the cable management tray back on.
Now imagine if you have a MacBook Pro or have a ton of devices like in my office.
This just won't work.
As a result, you do need to find another solution which could be mounting the power
bar upside down or get something like what I did in my office.
Definitely watch that video.
You probably also saw that I picked up this Anker Nano 30 watt block in case,
but didn't get to use it because the right angle cable was just enough.
But we'll keep it for when Chantelle uses the MacBook Air in other places
in the house or on the road going with a white frame.
The ModernCabinet by Effydesk was just a perfect fit into space.
It's got nice routed edges to balance out
all the straight lines you see in the room as a cabinet, everything is pretty great.
I love how it includes a little accessory
tray, and it's plenty spacious on the first two drawers.
The key is nifty and easy to use, and it's just a well balanced cabinet even
when you pull up everything thanks to that front wheel.
But what caught us off guard is that apparently this is a European cabinet
and isn't explicitly mentioned on the website, and more importantly,
it has a huge impact on the filing system itself.
You know how we have legal and letter sizes here in North America?
Well, Europe has their own a class paper sizes.
That's why the width of the cabinet is actually made for A4 hanging folders.
Since A4 is 8.3 inches
by 11.7 inches, it's actually very wide.
We were at first confused with what this
bar was for, but to realize that wait a second, our hanging folders don't fit
normally, you have to file the documents vertically, so we try that.
The bar is what allows you to do this.
But honestly, this is just plain awkward, as you can tell, especially when
pulling the filing folders out and then also back in.
So we went online to pick up this file system caddy to help remedy this.
The dimensions of this fit perfectly,
and once it's in, you can have all of your files in horizontally as it should be.
The only thing is that we didn't exactly gain any additional filing space,
as I had hoped for, because of how thick the front and back frame is.
But what are you going to do?
We thought about converting to a four hanging folders too,
but nobody really sells them here, and if they do, it's ridiculously overpriced.
Ultimately, I think our solution is what
made the most sense for this filing cabinet.
So don't let this catch you off guard, folks.
As for the AeryChair,
Chantelle's been really happy with her ergonomic mesh chair.
At last,
she has a nicely form fitting chair, thanks to how adjustable the chair is.
The breathability on the back is also so key.
The mesh is supportive, light feeling on the back and actually
very similar to what I have with the Herman Miller Aeron.
Honestly, it's just a really good,
high quality chair that we don't have any complaints about.
So that's a wrap.
We didn't know how this was all going to come together when we embarked on this
project, but 10,852 chopsticks standing desk, new cabinet,
ergonomic chair and many organization tools later, we pull it off.
Hopefully, this gives you additional
inspiration for building a home office space that doesn't have to be so tech
focused as you can tell, Chantelle's loving it.
Thank you to my friends at Effydesk and thank you for watching keep leveling
up that home office and going to awesome places.