Hello beefriends! I hope everyone is having a great day today. If you follow my blog you know I recently moved apartments, and so since I'm in a smaller space now, I wanted to use an idea I had seen on a minimalist vlogger's YT channel I follow: make a folding desk!
There are these great folding hinges available that you can buy:
Some of the reviews said that using the drywall anchors instead of drilling into studs made it not hold nearly as much as it claimed, and that's what I had to do. I live in a steel-framed apartment building, and tough maybe (?) now that I have a drill I could have drilled into those (but I'm not genuinely sure), I couldn't find studs in the wall where I wanted to put it anyway, so I went ahead and used the drywall anchors.
image from the sales page on Amazon
It should be fine anywho, because I decided to keep my trunk of sewing fabric under there, which will be a support, and then I can slide it out when I need to fold it down for extra room.
Queen Maggie helped me with installation
So I screwed the brackets onto the desktop first, using the trunk as my "wall" to know where to put them, since I've got heating registers along the bottom of the wall there. This way they are aligned far enough back and straight for when I mount it to the wall itself.
Then I struggled to figure out how to get it onto the wall - the desktop is pretty heavy and it was difficult to keep level when I tried my usual cat shelf-hanging method of balancing it on my head and one hand while I used the drill with the other hand, lol. So that's when I thought of using the trunk:
Which turned out to be the perfect height, and my original thought of where to put it (which you can see the pencil line on the wall in that photo) would have been a bit too high, ha ha.
Then I said, Oh No What Have I Done because I realized that I couldn't slide the trunk out with the brackets actually open, and the lip of the desktop was in the way in front. It took me several moments of gnashing my teeth to remember that the lip on the desktop is a separate piece and comes off, so I finally did that today and the trunk indeed does slide out now so I can fold it down when I want:
Yesterday I put up all the accoutrements on the wall above, including my Happy Light and little shelves holding various desk items like pushpins and a stapler and letter paper and whatnot, and some decorations:
Even the hexagon shelves went up pretty easily, when in the past I've struggled to align those just right, lol. The cart with my painting supplies went in beside the desk, and I put a crate of notebook/workbook type things that I frequently use as well as my sewing machine underneath.
And now I have a nice, organized work station! :)