While I assume most of our staff were out having a great time on the first day of winter break (we close the office for the week between Christmas and New Year’s), I rebuilt the desk in Andy’s office so I could make it standing height (lead photo).

Old buildings are full of surprises. Two weeks ago, a wet spot developed under Andy’s desk. At first he thought someone had spilled water on the carpet at the holiday party, but when the wet spot grew and soaked the carpet under his desk, it was obviously not a spill.

I pulled everything on the floor out of the office, pulled out the desk I had built-in the office several years ago, and pulled up the carpet to expose the slab. The building owners had the slab torn up and they found an uncapped floor drain under the slab that had backed up and the water eventually worked its way up through the slab and soaked the carpet. They capped the drain, replaced the wet dirt with dry fill, poured new concrete, and replaced the pad under the carpet. We left the carpet to dry for a week, got it cleaned, and then I spent yesterday rebuilding the desk so it could be raised to standing height.

I have now raised six desks at the office to standing height, as staff members want to vary between sitting on a stool or drafting chair and standing while they work. Since I had built-in most of the desks at the office between 2004 and 2008, raising the desks requires taking the desktops out, raising the frames, and reinstalling the desktops. The “L” shaped desktops are relativity easy, but the “U” shaped desktops require a certain amount of rebuilding before they can be raised to standing height (in a former life I was a cabinet and furniture maker and I also worked in construction). The last two photos show the two “U” shaped desks I raised a couple of months ago.  These two were complex projects because of the shape of the desks, and the height differences between the staff members who occupy them.