I guess, technically, this is my first post retirement project. I have some lathe stuff and some household stuff in flight in the background, but from beginning to end, this was roughly a 2 day build. And, now I’m sore. But, I have a standing desk.
For the last couple of years, in the office, I’ve been using a standing desk and found it to be a good thing. I usually felt better on the days I stood than some of the at home days. I probably stand 30% of the time and sit 70% of the time. While that doesn’t it seem like a lot, it made a big difference.
I’ve debated getting one for home, but my desk setup was going to retire some significant changes so I kept putting it off. With work ending, I decided I needed to just do it. It if became a construction zone in my den for a week or two, it wouldn’t matter. If I realized I could get it all done in two days, I would have done it sooner. But, I also didn’t have any of the details decided during those debates.
The problems:
- I have an existing desk wrap around that needed to be removed. I added this many years ago when I decided to use the book case as a desk and got rid of the table I had in the middle of the room. The wrap around wasn’t going to work with a desktop standing desk because it was too shallow and the corner wasn’t going to work because the monitors could only go up a couple of inches before hitting shelves.
- I needed something wide enough to hold all three monitors, but leave room for that cat toy and other furniture in the room.
- I needed a place for the tower computer, which is really heavy and a stereo amplifier.
- I wanted it to be easily moved if I want to rearrange my workspace or even use another room for a period of time.
As I worked with my sizing options and various online tables, I ended up down the path of a build your own. The price was better and it let me customize the shape. I had a left over piece of finished 3/4″ plywood in the garage I recovered from another project. I used these standing table legs from Amazon.
The build, for the most part was straight-forward. I had to get a little clever with the wheel mounts. Note, given there are now wheels, the table really needs a supporting beam at the bottom to avoid having the legs splay. I had originally planned to put one or two in and then use the resulting supports to have a shelf that could old the computer. In the end, the weight of the tower and its stability concerned me so I opted to forgo the entire effort. If the table starts to have issues, I will be adding in the support.
Cutting out the old wrap around desk wasn’t too bad. I taped up the desk to protect it and used a jigsaw for most of it. The part closest to the wall had a nearby cord hole, so I was able to connect the cuts there. The desk still needs some proper edge finishing, but that will wait until some time in the future when I come up with some clever solution.
Overall, it came out better than I expected. The wood was in good shape, on at least one side, and I added six layers of poly to it to make the surface a bit stronger.