So around three months ago (yes, I must do a post on that too) I changed roles at Red Hat and moved from constantly travelling and being on customer sites to working from home. As a result I needed to setup a workspace that I could use day to day.
One thing I’ve always wanted to try is a standing desk. I have back problems, and generally not the best posture, so I thought that would be one way to be able to deal with at least the later, and potentially even the former. The main problem, until recently, is that decent standing desks tend to be very expensive and I didn’t want to needlessly go and spent a lot of extra money for something that would be used for a week and never again. So I decided I would start with a cheap height adjustable desk, which I needed to get anyway due to my height, and then use it as a the basis of a standing desk and then hack it from there. The initial combo I decided on after a lot of looking was the IKEA Galant Height Adjustable Desk at £49 and the IKEA Lack Side table at £8 plus delivery. I figured at less than £100 including delivery if it was terrible I wasn’t wasting a lot of money!
As it turns out it’s been much better than I ever expected it to be. I initially setup the desk to the height I would want when sitting. At a height of six foot three inches I’m not the shortest of people so when sitting I prefer a higher than average desk. Sitting the Lack table on top of the desk by chance also ended up also giving me the perfect standing height. Bonus! A few quid for some foam gym mats plus a decent height adjustable monitor (the most expensive bit by far!) and I was done! Well mostly, I still haven’t decided on a decent keyboard yet.
So how does it look? Well a little bit weird to be honest. How does it work? Better than I ever expected as I find I can happily stand at the desk for a full eight hour working day without too much issue and I’ve even done longer (hello Fedora beta release candidates!!) and my back feels better than it has in a long time! I was also trying to decide on a decent but reasonably priced office chair to buy but now I’m not going to bother. Interestingly IKEA has also just launched the BEKANT sit/stand desk which is reasonably priced and has electric motors for raise/lower. It’s likely I’ll end up getting one of these one day but for the moment my IKEA hack is working pretty well.
