Hack a Standing Desk from IKEA | Hacker News Reader

Hack a Standing Desk from IKEA

priceonomics.com

73 pointsrohin50 comments

None of these "hacks" are adjustable height. I don't get the point of this page. Sure you can buy a table and make it taller, that's not why the standing desks are expensive. Can we have a hack for getting the adjustable part right?

To hack that part, I've seen people mount the monitor on an adjustable stand and the keyboard on an adjustable tray.

I don't understand why the height has to be adjustable. If you get a drafting chair then you can sit at the height of the desk anyway.

Standing up is much less forgiving than sitting down. A couple of centimeters either way standing up is the difference between feeling fine and having horrible back soreness within an hour of standing. The chances that the bits you buy when put together will be at the perfect height for you are very low, so being adjustable is important unless you like wedging random books under parts of it.

The vika byske legs in the second build are adjustable 70-107 cm. The utby underframe in the first one appears to have feet that are adjustable at least a few cm.

I've used the IKEA adjustable legs and frankly, setting a single leg to a specific length is a pain. Setting four legs to a specific length would be a larger pain, and doing so without turning the table to its side larger still. Not ideal when you're looking to slightly tweak the height of a table.

I disagree. From my experience as long as the keyboard is at a height so that your wrists are relatively neutral and the monitors are at a height where your neck is relatively neutral, I've had no issues with back soreness.

I haven't experienced this need to be exactly right with measurements myself.

Doesn't "keyboard and monitor at the right height" kind of indicate "desk at the right height"?

Part of the problem is that a quality drafting chair is expensive. If you're going to set up a standing desk to help your posture, and then cheap out on a chair, it might be somewhat counter productive.

As far as I can tell the adjustable height desk mechanisms are several times more expensive than a decent drafting chair. With a desk that moves I'd also be worried about cords being pulled out and similar issues (my desk especially underneath is a maze of wiring).

A lot of us don't have drafting chairs—I'm in a conventional Aeron, for example—and I don't like the feel of my feet not being on the ground.

The point of the page is to 1) acknowledge adjustable standing desks are spendy, and 2) provide possible cheaper standing desk alternatives.

Is it really that hard to grasp? Get a drafting chair. Or close the browser tab.

If you build a custom desk for yourself, you don't need it to be adjustable.

I can't imagine working at a standing desk that doesn't transition to something I can sit at as well.

I've been using the ikea standing desk from a few weeks ago -- the lack side table with a shelf screwed to it. I simply put my laptop on top and then use the rest of the normal height desk as a sitting desk. I just move my laptop across to switch. I already had the standard desk and chair, so the whole setup cost me about £10.

I leave the keyboard, mouse and power adapter on the standing side, as motivation to spend less time sitting. So far I can manage alternate hours sitting and standing, which isn't too shabby considering how out of shape I am.

This is what I used to build my own adjustable standing desk: http://www.leevalley.com/US/hardware/page.aspx?p=40573&c...

Note that the description is wrong. It's not a maximum of 20 lbs, it's just that the counterbalance is weighted for 20lbs. If you have 20 lbs worth of tabletop on top of it, there's basically no effort required to lift the table. I'm not sure what the maximum would be, but I was not concerned about my 45 pound monitor at all.

Do you have any pictures of your setup? That frame looks fascinating.

It got replaced with a "real" standing desk when we moved.

Basically all I did was screw a couple of boards to the top of the frame, and then C-clamped the bottom of the frame to a desk. I was always planning on doing it "properly", but never got around to it.

I hacked together a standing desk mode for my ikea galant:

http://www.jorgecastro.org/2011/12/09/the-43-ikea-galant-sta...

A word of warning for those of you who are thinking about doing this. I read all I could ahead of time about how to get the right height. At the time I didn't realize I was slouching, so when I measured and made the desk it was about 2cm too short.

I didn't realize until about a month later my left leg started getting numb due to a mild Sciatica. Adjusting it for the +2cm made all the difference in the world, so if you're going to do this make sure are standing up straight and your are not slightly looking down, and plan for adjusting the height to do microadjustments, it's a pain in the ass taking the thing apart because you mismeasured.

Either way I had no idea how to stand or sit right until I went to physical therapy and the lady showed me proper posture. Then when I went home I realized how messed up I was standing and sitting.

I learned all this _after_ I had made my standing desk, so either way if you make one yourself or get an adjustable talk to your doctor/PT-person/whoever who knows this stuff and have them show you how to do it properly.

Also, monitor arms to get those panels eye level, they make a huge difference!

I was thinking, "why not just buy a standing desk?" But then I saw the prices :-). Well, if you have the right tools, you can build quite a great adjustable desk, but you'll need more than IKEA. Off the top of my head, here's some things that you could use to build a manual or electric adjustable standing/sitting desk:

Metal tube - http://www.metalsdepot.com/products/alum2.phtml?page=tube... ;

Threaded rods - http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-4-6-x-3-ft-ACME-Threaded-Rod-Gener...

Gas springs (several of them would hold the desk pretty firmly, and you can adjust by pushing it down, with some locking mechanism in place) - http://www.ebay.com/itm/Two-USA-Made-Liftgate-Lift-Supports-...

Reduction motors - http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&...

OR steppers (if you go all out) - http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=stepper+motor&_sacat...

I guess the work involved is not for everyone, but it could be a fun project :-)...

The most effective hack is to just step away from the computer for an hour or two. Go for a walk, run, hell take up a martial art or two and meet people outside of you usual circle of friends while being physically active. Now that's a hack!

Pedantic drone: there is significant evidence that standing desks are worse for you than sitting desks (both standing and sitting are unhealthful; like you said, moving around is the answer --- you don't even need to move strenuously!).

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4248025

IIRC, there have been some studies that show that show that people who have jobs that require them to stand all day are healthier than those who sit all day, even if the sitters regularly exercise and the standers don't.

Were the sitters and standers otherwise performing comparable work? (such as typing and staring at a screen) Or were they moving around a work station, moving physical objects, etc.

Men's Health [1]:

"In a British study published in 1953, scientists examined two groups of workers: bus drivers and trolley conductors. At first glance, the two occupations appeared to be pretty similar. But while the bus drivers were more likely to sit down for their entire day, the trolley conductors were running up and down the stairs and aisles of the double-decker trolleys. As it turned out, the bus drivers were nearly twice as likely to die of heart disease as the conductors were.

A more recent interpretation of that study, published in 2004, found that none of the participants ever exercised. But the two groups did sit for different amounts of time. The analysis revealed that even after the scientists accounted for differences in waist size—an indicator of belly fat—the bus drivers were still more likely to die before the conductors did."

This looks like the Morris studies referenced in TRF [2] and BCMJ [3].

[1]: http://my.menshealth.com/exclusive-content/sentenced-chair

[2]: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/iprc/documents/bus_driver_wellbeing.pd...

[3]: http://www.bcmj.org/article/exercise-and-heart-review-early-...

If those are the studies I'm thinking of, they looked at people who sit continuously for several hours. Bad things happen to them, even if they exercise regularly when not sitting.

Best is to sit in a good ergonomic position, and about every 30 minutes get up and move around for a couple of minutes. Take a walk around the office, or go get a drink or something--the key is to get moving.

Do that and you'll beat both the long sitters and the long standers.

Yes a study showed that sitting for more than 6 hours a day increases mortality even if you excercise regularly.

There is some anecdotal evidence that some people work at jobs where taking an hour-long break (except for lunch) is pretty much guaranteed to net you a weeks-long+ break in employment.

Everytime I open up a link about a do-it-yourself standing desk, I hope that someone's found a recipe of Ikea parts and motors to make a motorized, adjustable standing desk.

If I had enough time to spend in Ikea maybe it'd be possible. :)

Hack a standing desk from Amazon ... by buying a drafting table: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...

For those of you considering building one, what's great about all of these in the article is the difference in height between the monitor and the keyboard. This benefit for ergonomics can't be overstated.

If you already have a desk / work in a cube, my buddy bought a Kangaroo which is a nice way to mount your monitor at the right height: http://www.ergodesktop.com/content/kangaroo-0

I use my geekdesk at home but I love the $22 standing desk from ikea for work. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4134307

I saw a fully motorized height adjustable desk for about 550€ at Ikea (Austria) the other day. If I had that kind of money laying around I'd much rather buy that than the Kangaroo (which is overpriced IMO).

Why do good ergonomics have to cost so much?

I went ahead and spent the money for the ergodesktop, this one:http://www.ergodesktop.com/content/kangaroo-elite For those of us working in a cubicle farm where the desks and walls are bolted together for miles, bringing in your own desk is not an option. I started by propping everything up on empty boxes. It was ugly as hell but the heights were correct. I did this for over a month just to make sure I was going to like standing as much as I did. Well, I loved it and buying the ergodesktop seemed like the logical next step. It IS expensive. But, I can take this with me when I leave knowing that no matter where I work I can set this baby on my desk and stand or sit. So far I love it and find it well worth the money given that I spend 40+ hours a week using it.

I have a workfit-S at home and at work.

http://www.amazon.com/WorkFit-S-Single-HD-Sit-Stand-Worstati...

Cheaper than the kangaroo, fully adjustable, and the weight limit will sustain a 30" monitor or a 27" imac.

I also have the crank-adjustable desk mentioned and vouch for its coolness. Very nice to be able to switch from sitting to standing on demand.

On demand plus the 3 minutes of RSI-inducing cranking.

I'm a fisherman by hobby, and I can spend up to 10 hours a day cranking the reel (not to mention rowing the boat). I understand the weight difference between the two, but I don't think 3 minutes of cranking a 20lb reel is going to do any long term damage unless your wrists are already sounding like a cement mixer.

I took a do-it-yourself approach and built my own stand-up desk using parts and tools I bought from Home Depot. It cost me 52 dollars and 3 hours of labor. I had a lot of fun and learned some basic carpentry skills in the process!

Get a kitchen island. You can hack away during the day and dine at night.

I appreciate repurposing things, but it seems like soon we're going to be "hacking" our ramen noodles by adding an egg. One the word means everything, it ceases to mean anything.

Yes, but first you've got to "crack" the egg.

You'd better have a proper license for that chicken's source code.

Still cheaper off by using some basic construction material: http://navni-stuff.blogspot.be/2011/07/standing-desk-part-1.... http://navni-stuff.blogspot.be/2011/07/standing-desk-part-2....

After hacking together these desks in the past I bought a Geekdesk (http://www.geekdesk.com).

You quickly realize the value of the $1,200 pricetag is that the desk adjusts in seconds to the exact sit or stand height you want. I would spend the same money on anything that keeps me healthier and decreases my back issues.

For those who sometimes work super long hours, checkout the sitting + standing desk on Ikea Hackers:

http://www.ikeahackers.net/2011/09/sitting-standing-desk-com...

Just moved into Vegas so there's no Ikea around me :-(, but plan to make the trip to CA just for this

The Ikea in Covina, CA delivers to Las Vegas [1]. There are also similar, cheaper services [2].

[1] http://www.ikea.com/us/en/store/covina/services/

[2] http://modernlv.com/

I didn't know the definition of "hack" included "buy some of-the-shelf parts from Ikea and stick them on your desk".

I'm seeing a lot of posts about standing desks lately. Additionally to what wikipedia says(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_desk#Advantages), is there another benefit of using a standing desk I'm not seeing?

I hacked a similar Utby underframe based solution [1] together a few years ago which I'm still content with. I did end up buying a drafting chair so I can sit at it on occasion.

[1] http://imgur.com/6lfl3

I just have the standard IDEA Fredrik desk with the table mounted at standing height, it works great for me.

http://www.jrnielsen.com/ikea-fredrik-desk-as-standing-works...

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