Business, Life

IKEA Hack Standing Desk

IKEA Hack - Building a Standing DeskIt is finally time to share my IKEA Hack Standing Desk! We talk a lot in our coaching program about creating a sanctuary. Having read so many reports on how staying seated all day simply is not good for you (Washington Post: The health hazards of sitting and LifeHacker: How Sitting All Day Is Damaging Your Body and How You Can Counteract It are just two examples), I decided that I wanted a standing desk. This is also a perfect fit for our 1300 sq foot bungalow built in 1920 – there simply aren’t a lot places in our house to put a full desk with a chair.

One Sunday, Mike & I headed off to the land of possibilities, err, I mean IKEA. Fortunately for me, he is a wonderful man who humors me when I’ve got a decorating whim, and we hunted for the perfect parts for my desk which I plant to put in the garden after I get my freestanding patio covers. After a few rounds of the store, this was what we came up with.

IKEA Standing Desk Top

For the Desk:

For the Shelf:

We always use the Fixa Drill to put our IKEA purchases together. We own a full-size drill, but Mike swears by the Fixa making putting furniture together fast & easy.

Standing Desk Expedit Ikea HackI measured out the perfect height for a keyboard for me using boxes on the kitchen counter, and subtracted the thickness of the table top from that height to get the required leg height. I also measured from there the height that I prefer to have my monitor at. I know it is high for some people, but it is perfect for me – fortunately, the legs come in shorter heights as well.

The first few weeks I used the desk, I discovered it still wasn’t quite right, and I was flexing my wrists at an awkward angle. One day, I cleared the desk off, pulled out my old college yearbooks and two other thick books, and put them under the desk. It raised it up another inch or so, and it is perfectly flat and stable so it works for me. If it had not worked, I would have gone back, purchased two more sets of countertop legs in the right height, and made the top of the desk stand on the Expedit shelf below. As it is, it is super stable and doesn’t move at all.

I don’t normally need it, but I brought home one of the Franklin Bar Stools that I had up at my studio for when I want to sit down. It comes in handy if I need to watch a long video, and I am going to try to do my client calls there this week as well to see how it works for height and light.

I still write my blog posts on my laptop, mostly out of habit. My laptop keyboard is my “writing” place. For work? My desk is perfect now. I love it!

Knick Knacks on my Desk

(PS – my custom wood USB drives with my logo? You can get them at Photo Flash Drives – no minimum order, no fee for adding custom art work, and a great company to work with! Check them out!)

Christine Tremoulet

Online Social Marketing Strategist at Christine Tremoulet
Christine Tremoulet is an author, a social marketing strategist, and a speaker. She uses her 15 years of blogging experience (she actually named WordPress!) to help others with Blogging Brilliantly so they can use their blog and social media to share their story with the world and build their own successful business. She is the original Avenger of Sexiness. She truly believes that You Are Enough. She lives in Houston, Texas with her husband & her college-age son, when not out on an adventure. (You can follow those at Have Gear, Will Travel.) Mini Cooper is her spirit animal.

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