Over the last several months, both at work and at home I got fed up with sitting in front of my computer.  There has been several articles recently about the benefits of standing verse sitting. 

• How Many Calories Would You Burn If You Switched to a Standing Desk?
• Sitting All Day: Worse For You Than You Might Think
• Is All That Sitting Really Killing Us?

At Work

• Sitting in front of a computer all day is an unavoidable aspect when you work in the software industry.  Like many office jobs, a large percentage of our day is spent in a degrading slouch.  Even if you have great posture you are still just sitting on your butt.   At Microsoft standing desks are not that unusual, if you have a medical condition, such as a bad back, you can get a fancy motorized workstation.  These are very cool, but they require a doctor’s approval, a set of paperwork, and way too much frustration for my interest. 

$10 is all it takes

After a brief Alpha test (involved books and fearful looks from my co-works) I determined the desk height that was going to work for me.  From there I took off for my local home improvement store to buy 16, 6”x6”x2 1/2” pavers, four for each corner of my desk.  This was much more stable then my Alpha build, although I was still getting some strange looks from co-workers. 

This may not be the fanciest office desk, but it solves the problem, and I already have a few co-workers building their own versions, a trendsetter, I know.

At Home

After a few months of using my standing desk at work, I really wanted to find a way to convert my home office desk to the same setup.  In this case, it was not going to be as easy as a set of bricks.  My home office desk is a large corner unit that I share with my wife.  Plus, I didn’t think the landscaping look was going to go over all that well within the house.

Before

No this was going to take some creativity.  After spending a bunch of time searching around the web, I found Chris Pollock’s How To: Build a Custom Ergonomic Computer Desk.  Chris’ desk design was not exactly what I was looking for, but it gave me inspiration.  Taking Chris’ design, I was able to hack it for my purposes.  I wanted to reuse my existing desk, but I just wanted the corner section to be about 42” high.  After finding all the parts I needed at Simplified Building I was about set, I just needed 4×7’ 1 1/2 inch galvanized fence posts from the local Lowes.  

Hardhat Zone

Finished Product

Parts List:

5 X L152-7 Square Flange = $60

8 X L10-7 Single Socket Tee = $75

5 X 133-7 Plastic Plug = $12

4 X 7’ Galvanized Fence Post = $48

Total =  $195

Not too bad, I was able to reuse my current desk, and did not affect the layout of my home office.  Of course now that I have my desk this way my wife is thinking of having me do the same thing to her desk areas both at home and work.

Get off your A$$

As you can see, with a little creativity you too can build out a standing desk.  Try it, I’m sure you will like it, I haven’t even thought of going back.