Cantilevering A Desk

[Chris Jenkins]

I recently closed on a house and most of the boxes have been unpacked aside from the the office to be. In our last house I bought stock countertops from the local home center and cantilevered them off the wall by using some 2 x 4 bracing (2 pieces forming a 90 and a 45 support). We liked the way it worked so much for us last time the wife wants to do it again.

This time I am trying to get a bit smarter about the installation. Instead of leveling all these individual braces, I want to slap up a 2 x 4 down the length of the wall and build the braces off off of that. This way I just level one surface and build off of that and shim only a few spots in the end rather than individual braces.

Does that sound like a better plan? Is there some type of "standard" way of doing this? Also I planned on making the supports 10 - 12 long supporting the countertop that is 25" deep. Is this enough? Last time I made the supports 16" long, but we would hit our knees on the ends of them (even though I beveled the ends). The heaviest things that would be on this countertop our the PC monitors, so I figure I could go a bit shorter on the bracing (the 16" braces allowed me to walk on top of the countertops last time!)

Thanks

[Jim Becker]

Chris, take a look at the "Cantilievered Miter Station" I built in my shop based on Chris Gotchenour's design in FWW awhile back. (See the article on my web site) You may be able to pull some ideas from that for your project.

[patrick anderson]

I built a worktop for my office downstairs. It has 3 comps and a pile of other stuff on it. It's 3' deep X 15' wide

I made it from 3/4 mdf doubled up. I fixed mdf cleats on the wall to support 3 of the sides. I then got a piece of 2x2x1/8 aluminium angle and screwed it to the front of the counter. this left a perfect edge to but up to with the vct for the top. I then added 2 metal legs in the middle from ikea.

[Jeff Borges]

Jim, do you have a link???

I am at that point in my shop. and would love a few ideas

[Jim Becker]

Access to a web site listed in and SMC member's profile is easy...just click on their name at the top of a post.

[Laurie Brown]

I worked a temp job at a hospital last summer and they were putting in countertops in their offices like this. They used these big metal L-shaped brackets attached to the wall to hold the countertops up, and they were out of the way of any legs sitting at the counters. Only in the center and on the ends did they have those full-length supports.