Work for a lot of people is moving/has moved into a “new normal” but for the past couple of years, working from home has been the situation for a lot of people. To make my desk at home more comfortable for me, I made a footrest and a laptop riser.
I very rarely sit still and noticed early on when working from home that I wanted something to put my feet on so I could raise my legs up a bit when moving positions and stretching my legs out under my desk. I did some research and found an angled footrest to be best for comfort, with an angle somewhere between 5 and 15 degrees. I decided to make one with a 15 degree angle to start and thought I could always trim it to a flatter angle if I found it was uncomfortable for my body shape.
As lockdown meant I had to use whatever wood I had in the workshop, I decided on some left over pieces of pallet wood to make the sides and boards for my feet, cutting them to length with my mitre saw and using my table saw to cut the 15 degree angle on the side pieces. I notched out half of the back piece so it could be firmly glued to the side panels and after a quick dry test fit, I applied glue to all the joints and left it to dry overnight. The finished footrest has a footprint of 30 x 30 cm and is easily moved around on the floor under my desk for wherever I want to put my feet when I stretch my legs out.
On top of the desk, I have two monitors connected to my work laptop, which causes quite a lot of cables at the back of my laptop, as well as the power cable, mouse, keyboard and my USB headset for virtual meetings. The air vents on this model of laptop are situated at the back and with the multi-socket extension lead and all the cables, I found the hot air was getting a bit trapped and causing the laptop to overheat. I decided to make a very simple laptop riser, just to lift the laptop up slightly to improve the cooling and allow the hot air to more easily dissipate.
I used my mitre saw to cut a couple of scrap pieces of 2×2 to the right length and then glued one at each end of a piece of plywood, which I had already cut to the right dimensions for my laptop (38 x 25cm). Once the glue was dry, I put it on my desk and tested it out – the riser works perfectly to lift my laptop up enough for the hot air to be moved away effectively, helping my laptop stay cool. So now both me and my laptop can be more comfortable! 🔨
The Woodworking Scientist 