Wireless AP
Betty's Office

When I bought the house it had a new utility room added which took a little over half of one of the garage bays.   The old utility room was a computer room with an old intertainment center as a computer desk and small shelves filling in the space between the sides of the entertainment center and the walls.   It had dark green, wall paper below the wainscoat, and dark green indoor/outdoor carpet.   The furdown was still there for the original cabinets which had been above the washer and dryer had been moved to the new utility room.   The old utility room was 63" across the back and 76" front to back.   One door came from the den at the left rear and another on the right wall (rear) went to the new utility room.

I decided to rebuild the old utility room into a more workable computer office.   I bought a formica covered countertop with a splash back and mounted it wall to wall.   I made a bookcase and mounted it above the desktop with extensions on the lower shelf for two printers.   I placed two 13 watt high effeciency fluourescent fixtures under the book case.   Under the countertop on the left I built a hanging shelf for the computer, in the center a slide out keyboard and mouse shelf, and on the right a small drawer.   The main phone line and a DSL line was already present in the back wall, so I made this my central punchdown panel for the rest of the house.   I mounted a 1 GB switch under the table with a gig-link to another in the front bedroom where the main gateway machine lives.

An old pic when we first moved in, the old utility room had beenused as a computer room!   There was an old intertainment center cabinet for the computer, withshelves on both sides.

Betty in her office before I built the book shelves above her desk.

Current view from the den.   Note the weather station right of the doorway.

The bookcase, mostly Unix, networking, and programming texts.

Desktop from front showing printers on bottom bookcase shelf.   You can see the shelf extensions and their supports for the printers.

Desk lights.

Under the desktop showing computer shelf, keyboard shelf, drawer, computer UPS, and network (the switch is screwed upside down under the drawer support).   The switch mounted under the table is the main 1Gb switch for the house, the main internet feed also comes in here and is routed to the office (where the gateway computer is) from here.   I need to clean up the wiring and hang up the UPS to make this look neater and easier to vacuum.   I probably need to do a page on the computer hanging shelf, I've built several of these for different mini-towers, it makes it easy to clean under it and raises the CD/DVD drive, and USB ports for easy access.

View from utility room.

I'm adding two new drawers for Betty to store items in.   Under the original drawer on the right side.

Closer look.

I had to add a box for the drawers and a bar at the back to support it.