Office

Update: Installing a Monitor Arm on my Tiny Desk.

Dave Jansen

• 3 min read
Update: Installing a Monitor Arm on my Tiny Desk.

A few weeks ago I installed a dual monitor arm on my tiny standing desk, and today I wanted to post a quick follow-up to this.

First; I've been thoroughly enjoying this setup. It not only brought up the monitor(s, now) to the right height (as I had to look down too much before), it too gave me two displays, which I believe is the perfect amount for development work. While I have two 28" displays at work, they're actually a bit too big for a dual display setup, but I do enjoy two 23" displays alongside one another quite a bit.

The four pieces of wood I had installed alongside each other for forward/backward strength

When planning how to strengthen the tiny desk, I had mainly focussed on how the weight of the monitors would be basically pulling forward (toward me), and thus I wanted to ensure there was as much added strength as possible for that direction. A few weeks later though I realized I should've instead focussed on both this direction, as-well as the weight of the monitors pressing down onto the desk.

You can see the desk has bent slightly under the weight of the monitors.

I was expecting the desk to —let's call it adjust— slightly to the weight of two monitors, but I wasn't too happy about how it looked, and I didn't want to have it bend further or, worse, break. While I doubt it would ever really break outright, it's certainly better to be safe rather than sorry, so I made a small adjustment to the setup today. The solution here is simple; rotate the center two slats 90 degrees.

Trying out the new orientation and marking where to pre-drill for the screws.
Using some electrician's tape to mark the maximum depth I should drill.
All 8 holes pre-drilled.
Middle two slats now screwed down in their new spots. Quick and easy.

That's all the changes I made. Other than the slight bending, the setup really has been working quite well. I'm very happy with it. This adjustment also had an immediate effect on the bendiness, as you can see below.

The desk has adjusted back to being flatter right away.

I still think a more ideal route would be to replace the entire top with a thicker piece of hard wood, but with limited access to wood and other DIY related things where I live, this is as good as it gets, and if I'm being totally honest, the entire desk setup isn't the sturdiest so I would probably benefit from a more serious setup no matter how you look at it. Fortunately though, this works, and helps me build projects now, as supposed to later. And that's all that really matters.