We had adjustable desks at the office, and I would stand most of the time. The last few months of working from home has me sitting way too much, and I could tell it started to affect thing snow that I was back at the gym. So I thought making a standing desk would be in order.
I used the plans from the Homemade Modern site, though mine was a little bit longer. The note there, on the photo of the girl putting the pipes together, mentions it being “easy and fun,” which it is not. Making sure threaded pipes are the required tightness involved lots of bodily contortions, screwdrivers as levers, and some creative vice work. You end up with lots of dirt and oil on you, and a few cuts from the pipe threads.
I built the 42″ version, which is an inch or two too short for how I like it, since my arms need to angle down a bit instead of being parallel to the floor. It’s well within the comfortable range, though. I’m only 5’7″, so I didn’t need anything really tall.
The heads of the drywall screws I bought were very slightly too small for the holes in the braces and the flanges, and I didn’t want to go out and buy washers just for this, so I dug into my junk jar of stuff accumulated over the years and gathered an assortment of washers that would fit “enough.” You can all those different sizes and kinds I used in the under-the-table shots. I even used a wing nut. The mismatch look kinda goes with the rough, industrial aesthetic of the table in general.
It all worked in the end, even for an inexperienced wood guy like me.
2 Comments
A younger version of me would love this kind of thing, but with bad knees and one bad hip, those days are long gone. Now I long for a 20″ touch screen on a free-swinging arm with counterbalancing springs so I can adjust it at my whim, and a separate keyboard for writing. Then I need it positioned next to my recliner. 😉
I’ll get right on that design! Haha.
Standing for a while does take its toll on me, despite being a featherweight. It seems like we were designed more for persistent movement to varying degrees, with short periods of rest. Being stationary for too long, standing or sitting, can be detrimental, each in its own different ways.