At my work, I’m fortunate enough to have one of those adjustable desks that allow for you to stand or sit while you work. Since I almost always have it in the standing mode I decided to build my own standing desk at home. However I’m on a college student budget, and don’t want to spend an arm and a leg right now. In the end I came up with this solution that’s left me pretty happy.
I started off with a 18"x48" shelf from Lowes that I cut the top half of the bars off. I already knew the exact height I wanted thanks to my desk at work and proceeded to trim the shelf bars down to 44". I also found a nice piece of wood at Lowes that was a perfect size of 24"x48", exactly what was my previous desk was. Here’s the mock up:
Then after some sanding, staining, and finishing I came up with this:
It was my first time staining, and it could use some work but overall I’m happy with it. Everything fit pretty nicely once I moved it into it’s new location.
I figured since I wouldn’t want to stand 24/7 I would get a bar stool for when I needed a break. A quick trip to Walmart and I found an okay stool for 20 bucks. I ended up sanding it down to prep for staining and added some extra screws since it felt a little wobbly.
Unfortunately I guess I didn’t remove all of the original stain, so my new coat didn’t take. It did produce a nice almost aged look so in the end it wasn’t a total loss. It just doesn’t quite match the desk top like I was hoping for.
Final set up. I’ve been using it for a week now and am pretty happy with the results. I don’t regret switching to a standing desk as it feels a lot better than sitting all the time.
