we have achieved structural stability:

[thanate]

Finished, sanded, more or less square, locked onto the desk (see the side supports at the base?), with hole for cords to reach the lowest shelf. Still needed: a power strip long enough to reach down to the outlet from there (sigh), and a 1' x 46.5" strip to attach a bulletin board below the light switch, so that the cords have somewhere to hid behind when descending from said (possibly mythical) power strip. And I have a bulletin board, of course.

I plan to deploy my secret weapon (ie, my father, who has a table saw & a basement full of usefully sized wood scraps) tomorrow for part 2. Part 1 may involve slight design re-thinking; we shall see.

In other news, I begin to despair of hosting any sort of event that other people can attend. Including, apparently, my husband...?