One day, fate granted me the “printer of my dreams.” Unfortunately, fate decided its job was done at that point.
I had always dreamed of having a big, reliable printer at home. I mean a regular printer — the kind that prints letters on paper, like the ones used in offices. I still remember one of those from a previous job.
That machine was a beast! I assure you, not a single blonde secretary escaped unscathed — breaking nails while trying to shove a stack of envelopes into the slot where the paper came out after printing. Futile! It was practically impossible to ruin this printer. No matter what you did — bang your head against it, sit on it, or print an annual report at 3,000 pages per minute, double-sided. The toner lasted a solid month of nonstop printing for an entire floor of a decently sized office. The paper tray could hold enough sheets to fell the forests of the Amazon in one go. A true workhorse of office life. Ugly, without flashy blue LEDs and full-HD screen, noisy. But reliable and indestructible, like solid rock.
I wanted one of those.
And one fine day, this dream came true. The story of how I came into possession of this artifact isn’t particularly relevant here. Though, to be fair, it’s a tale worth telling. But for the purpose of this article, it’s enough to note that some proverbs and sayings exist for a reason. One of them goes, for instance: “Be careful what you wish for.” And, oh, how true that is.
When you look at photos of these printers online, or spot one in the hallway of a fancy class-A office, or even picture yourself owning one, their true size isn’t immediately apparent. A printer doesn’t seem all that big when it’s tucked away in the corner of accounting or sitting in the office hallway. It doesn’t even look large in photographs. Sure, it’s a bit bigger than your standard home desktop printer. But just a bit, right?
No! It’s much bigger than a standard desktop printer! It’s HUGE!
When I brought this beast home and hastily assembled it in my office on a conveniently available circular saw stand, I still hadn’t fully processed its sheer scale. I had to immediately leave to help a friend with his project. Only after returning home and calmly taking a proper look at my new purchase did the realization hit me: “Oh, sweet mother of — where the heck am I going to put this thing?!“
The printer took up nearly all the free space in the middle of the study:
To give you a better sense of the scale of this disaster, here’s what it looks like in the context of the entire room (and this is without attaching the side trays):
If I were to place the printer under any of the desks, it would fill all the space underneath, making it impossible to sit there — nowhere to put your legs. The desk surfaces themselves are strictly regulated for other uses. Not a single corner of the room was free to house this beast. If I put it by the window, it would block the main walkway between workstations. The rest of the walls were lined with desks and doors. And naturally, leaving it on the floor in the center of the room wasn’t an option either.
My wife, however, had more time to think about the situation. By the time I returned, she had strategically positioned herself by the study door, arms crossed, her gaze fixed firmly on my bewildered expression. Her entire demeanor screamed that if I so much as suggested letting this thing cross the threshold of the study room and claim a spot anywhere else in the house, rivers of blood would flow, and mountains of corpses would pile up. I didn’t even dare to try.
Especially since she always keeps her little basket of yarn, knitting needles, and crochet hooks within arm’s reach. Knitting needles and crochet hooks are dangerous objects in the hands of any woman. And this particular woman also discreetly stashes her Walther PPK .308 caliber in that same basket (thinking no one knows about it). Meanwhile, all I had was a bottle of beer in hand, panic in my brain, and absolutely no concrete proposals. Under such conditions, any discussion was doomed to fail before it even began.
I had to act cunningly. I plugged the printer into the nearest outlet and router in its current location. Then, I found a knitting pattern my wife had been asking me to print for ages. I printed it on large 11×17″ paper in the highest quality and handed it to her. Seeing her pattern in such size and quality, something she wasn’t accustomed to, distracted her for a while, which lifted the immediate threat of reprisal. That gave me the chance to think calmly.
The only feasible spot in the study room where this printing monstrosity could be placed was a wall closet that had long been repurposed as a storage nook:
The depth was sufficient. Of course, some shelves in the central area would need to be removed to create an open space:
There’s no point in considering the shelves themselves as a base for the printer. First, they’re not deep enough. Second, they simply can’t handle such weight (~180-200 lbs without paper, according to the documentation). Third, the printer occasionally needs maintenance, which would require pulling it out of the closet for side access. There’s no way to lift it off the shelves without additional help.
What I needed was something like a mobile printer stand on wheels.
The first idea was to get the original printer stand designed for this model:
Unfortunately, it’s not so much a stand as it is yet another large automatic paper tray. Consequently, the price for these, even on the used market, isn’t exactly modest (~$200-350, which is two to three times more than what I paid for the printer itself). And honestly, what would I need another tray for? Even the “bare” printer already has three paper feeding systems: two native trays at the bottom and a “manual” feed on the side.
Another option was to try and find a suitable piece of regular furniture. Something like a low coffee table or a small nightstand. I could attach wheels to it myself:
Alas. A quick run through the nearby junk shops yielded nothing. Either everything was flimsy or the dimensions didn’t match. Even IKEA didn’t have anything useful. There were a few pieces that were roughly the right size with some tinkering, but in terms of load-bearing capacity, their furniture made from compressed toilet paper wasn’t even close to adequate. I’d have to trim, reinforce, or modify it somehow. Way too much hassle. And at that point, it’d be simpler to just move on to the final remaining option.
As you’ve probably already guessed, the last remaining option was to build the stand myself.
Basically, nothing fancy is required. A frame made of 2×4 lumber on wheels, covered with plywood for decorative purposes:
When it comes to lumber, it’s important to always keep in mind that its “nominal” size (2×4 inches in this case) refers to the raw dimensions fresh off the sawmill. By the time it reaches the end consumer through a store, after drying and planing, the lumber shrinks by half an inch on each side. In other words, when drafting plans or building models, you should account for lumber that’s actually 3.5×1.5 inches. But it will still be called a “two-by-four” — because, well, “that’s just the way it is around here.“
So, this was the kind of frame that needed to be assembled in the first stage:
Maybe I’m slightly overplaying the printer’s weight, and a simple plank might have sufficed for the frame, but…
No tricks, no frills. Just lumber cut to size and put together into a block. The frame was assembled using biscuit joints and “wood welding” (aka Titebond III). With this combo, no screw could add anything meaningful to the joints, so there isn’t a single screw in the entire frame:
The frame, as it stands, could already hold the weight of a car. Later, it would be covered in plywood, which would tie all the crosspieces together into a single, solid block. The resulting strength of the stand would far exceed what was actually required. However, in this case, “you can’t have too much of a good thing.“
There’s only one non-obvious point regarding the paneling. The inner walls of the niche are attached to the frame only at the front and back. As a result, they tend to bow inward in the middle:
To prevent this, the frame includes a small addition in the form of two thin wooden strips designed to support the inner walls along the entire perimeter:
There were other ways to solve this issue. Or I could have chosen not to solve it at all — it’s not that critical. A couple of dabs of glue would’ve been enough to hold the walls in place at the center. But with the strips, it’s sturdier and stronger overall:
The bottom of the niche, its “ceiling,” and the top cover of the entire box:
The bottom and the top cover were essential elements, included in the original design from the start. However, the niche’s “ceiling” was optional. Honestly, it wasn’t all that necessary since it wouldn’t be visible anyway. The same applied to the box’s bottom panel:
The decision ultimately depended on the piece of plywood I already had in storage. It was clear it would be enough for the “bare minimum,” with some leftover. If the leftovers were sufficient for all the optional elements — great. If not, they’d be skipped. In the end, it was a kind of compromise. The remaining sheet was enough for the optional “ceiling” of the niche, but not for the bottom panel. And so be it.
To speed things up and keep it simple, I cut the side panels directly in place rather than adjusting each one individually to fit around the corners.
Preliminary diagonal measurements of the box showed it was sufficiently rectangular and even. A minor 1/8-inch discrepancy along the sides wasn’t critical for the overall appearance. However, it was critical when accounting for it while cutting the panels. Even a tiny miscalculation would result in a panel sticking out somewhere. This would mean tedious sanding and adjusting later. But there’s an easier, faster way.
The side panel was cut with a small margin and glued to the side as-is. Any excess was cleanly, evenly, and instantly trimmed off with a flush trim router bit along the box’s contour:
The same approach was used for cutting out the niche opening on the front panel of the stand. I really didn’t feel like cutting this opening manually. And setting up and coding the CNC router for such a basic task seemed like overkill.
So, the front panel was glued to the frame as a solid sheet, like all the other walls. Then, a “starter” hole was made in it. Using this hole, and the same flush trim router bit, the entire opening was quickly rough-cut, and the remaining bits were cleaned up for a neat finish:
The router’s corner radii were left as-is, giving the niche a more polished and appealing look…
The stand was almost ready:
All the panels fit together nearly perfectly, with no gaps or seams. As a result, the puttying around the edges and perimeter was minimal — just enough to “seal” the plywood edges before painting. Otherwise, once the paint soaked in, the edges might swell:
After letting the putty dry overnight, just a touch of sanding with the sander, and it was time to move on to the final stage.
The painting of the entire box in white was taken over by my wife. I usually don’t have the patience for that kind of task. Simple water-based interior paint applied in several layers:
My wife handled the painting while I was away, so by the time I saw it, the stand was already finished. The result, in my opinion, was more than satisfactory. Considering that the whole thing was built with a hammer, circular saw, glue, and a bit of cursing, practically on the fly…
The only thing left was to attach the wheels under the watchful eye of the “wheel inspector”:
According to the “wheel inspector,” absolutely none of the wheels were in their proper places. One was apparently meant for his blanket in the living room, another for my pillow in the bedroom, a third for the Cat’s bowl, and as for the fourth, he hadn’t quite decided yet — as he was caught just in time.
And finally, the grand moment of hoisting the printer onto its new mobile stand:
Ah, if only that were the end of it…
The stand with the printer on its own didn’t solve the overall problem. The closet, where they were meant to be tucked away, needed to be reconfigured first — particularly the shelves — to accommodate this setup.
At the beginning of the year, when I was planning the renovation of the study room, I had a feeling that something would eventually happen to the closet. So, in the meantime, I used it as temporary storage for various types of packaging and those odds and ends that didn’t have a place on the shelves above the desks. I tried not to clutter it too much, dumping in only what was likely to end up in the trash anyway but was allowed to “sit for now.” Well, it’s sat long enough. Time’s up.
First, I had to clear out all the junk from the lower half of the closet, remove some of the shelves, and see how everything fit and how much the virtual model of the setup deviated from reality:
The difference between expectations and reality was so negligible that it didn’t even need to be accounted for. Like, the space between the printer and the shelf above it turned out to be a quarter inch larger than in the model.
The space in the closet on either side of the printer didn’t go to waste. The solid shelves removed from the closet were trimmed to avoid interfering with the printer and then put back in place. On the right side, they ended up being quite small and essentially useless, but on the left, deeper inside the closet, there were still long enough sections to be fully functional:
Now, the only thing left to do was to sort through the junk that had been taken out of the closet. Some of it would go back into the closet, and some would head to the trash. That’ll be my “homework” for the week in the evenings.
One way or another, the printer problem was solved:
Now I’ll just need to cram the color inkjet printer-scanner in there as well (you can see it sitting on the small plastic stand on the right side of the frame). Might as well have everything in one place. That plastic stand annoys me anyway. It was placed in the corner solely to hold the inkjet printer. I’m thinking of removing those blue drawer blocks from the shelves and finding a new spot for them. In their place, the inkjet printer would fit perfectly on a shelf inside the closet.
I’m still mulling over this secondary reorganization of the closet — there are a few unresolved details for now. Things will become clearer once I go through the junk that was taken out of the closet. But as far as the “big” printer is concerned, the issue is fully resolved. And we’ve decided that’s a good thing.
So that’s that…