Farexon Standing Desk Upgrades

Hi, I'm Mike with House on the Mend, and in part two of our review of the Ferrixon electric standing desk, I'm gonna keep my promise, which is to show you how I made some great improvements to the desk. Number one, put in a drawer, full extension drawer slides. Two, I mounted a power strip underneath the table so as you raise and lower it, it doesn't pull your cords out. And three, we dealt with the problem of this mat being oversized and thus not giving you access to the cable tenders. So let's get started. If you break it, he will fix it. If you buy it, he will build it. House on the Mend. So my original plan was to mount the drawer right here and screw right into these two cross beams. And then right where you see this line, I would notch out the metal rack here for this bar that spins. Only problem with that is it's way too far back from the front of the table, and even worse over where the table starts cutting in here. So it would be so far back when you pulled it out, you wouldn't be able to even get your hand in. So that area is not gonna work. Instead, we're gonna mount it over this way, right like this. And that way, there'll only be a slight amount of overhang from where the table is tapered back, and it'll be out of the way so our legs aren't bumping into it over here. So I think that's gonna work best. Now, there's a few modifications we're gonna need to make here to install this. First of all, even though I love the placement of the keypad, it has to be moved over to the other side, which is really no problem because there's the same screws over on the other side. So let's move that out of the way. Now, to go right here, we're gonna need something to anchor these brackets onto. And so I took a measurement of this bar, and it's not necessarily square, it's more rectangular, but nonetheless, it comes up from the tabletop an inch and a quarter. So I have inch and a quarter square stock that I cut, and this is available at Lowe's or Home Depot, very easy to get, doesn't need to be too thick. I'm gonna put one piece way over here, and that way, when we set this guy in place like that, we'll be able to screw in on both sides. As you can see here, there's this nice area where we can screw holes and then mount screws right into this square tubing. So since it's square tubing, I'm gonna make a hole that goes through this side and through the bottom side. Then I'm going to enlarge this hole so I can get a screwdriver and a screw head through here into this and a very shallow wood screw to secure in, say, two or three spots to the tabletop. So I've marked on the square stock where the holes are pre-drilled on the drawer slides, and that gives me an indication of where I can pre-drill for wood screws to go into the bottom of the tabletop. So for instance, in between there, I can easily get one, two, three wood screws, and another one, two, three. I'm gonna do three on each side because this tabletop is not very thick. It's maybe 3 1⁄4 or an inch, so I'm not gonna get a lot of purchase with each screw, and therefore, I'm gonna distribute the weight and the load on them with three on each side. And just like that, through the magic of YouTube editing, these two pieces are drilled out and ready to go. So first thing I did was drill through both sides with a smaller drill bit, and then I came back with a step-up drill bit, and I widened these holes so that these wood screws can get through that side but will hold down the smaller side. After that, I cleaned everything up with acetone to get all the manufacturing oils and my own body oils off of it, painted it all with some Rust-Oleum paint, and now we are just about ready to install them. The last little touch is these 1 1⁄4-inch end caps. They're made specifically for this box steel, so just put them on there like that and push them into place. Yeah. And since this one is butting up against this crossbar, we'll just put one on the front. There. Doesn't that dress it up nice? And the last one. Good. This time, instead of wood screws, I'm gonna switch to self-tapping screws meant for metal. There's one. Last one. Nice. Perfect. So this is the power strip I got. It not only has these four plugs here, but on either side, it's got two smaller ones, very commonly used for charging phones and smaller devices. But the best thing about it is it also has this bank of four USB ports right here. So I'm gonna put it about right here so everything can comfortably lead right into this cord controller. Now, the mounting spots here are actually so small that even these tiny little wood screws won't fit into those holes. So because of that, I cleaned both surfaces with rubbing alcohol, I took off these four feet, and now I've applied some adhesive-backed Velcro. And I think all I'm gonna do is just put this in place, and if it doesn't work out, then I'll find some smaller screws. Good. Now I'll just trail out enough of this cord so that when the table is elevated to its full height, it doesn't pull on the cable. And now let's rectify one of my pet peeves, which was this mouse pad or mat, which I actually really like, covers up the cord tenders. So I'm gonna take a piece of chalk, and I'm just gonna run around the outline here. And I'm gonna use a razor blade and cut into the material. And that might be good enough to just push it through, but I think I'm gonna cut out some of it. Boom, there's one and two. So much better. So there we go. Three great, much-needed improvements. This drawer is a game changer. To be able to have my notepad, my hyperdrive, so I can transfer files over to my iPad is just so handy. And the power strip turning one outlet into 12, and then no matter what height the table is at, you don't have to worry any longer about yanking out your power cord. And finally, coming up with a solution where I can utilize these really nice little cable tenders. So if you found this video helpful, will you please give it a thumbs up? It really helps the algorithms to start suggesting it to more people like you. Also, please consider subscribing. I work really hard to put out good quality content and there's more videos to come. I'm gonna leave links for everything that I utilize here for these upgrades. Now, full disclosure, they're Amazon affiliate links. So if you click on them and end up making a purchase, it won't cost you a thing, but I do get a small award at the end of the month. It helps to justify the time and effort it takes to make these videos. Until next time, thank you for watching.