I blogged last week about my $50 standing desk I built from Ikea. Today I will review how my first week has been,

My feet hurt. 

Not unexpected but after a week of standing for 8+ hours a day my feet are sore. Mostly on my heels. The pain is not unbearable. I have been able to push through it. The first day was the roughest. When I went to bed I could really feel it. I have found that wearing socks help. I have a chair mat under my desk which I also think is helping give some extra padding. I find myself shifting from side to side a lot. I think the soreness will subside over the next few weeks. But we will see.

Where did all my steps go?

First off I love my fitbit. It has pushed me hard to stay more active. I had assumed that using a standing desk would mean more steps. But I was very wrong. On Monday after lunch I checked my step count and boy was I low. I find standing I take less stretching breaks so I got a lot less steps. I do get a lot more work done, but this meant extending my gym time on the treadmill just to get my steps in.

Forcing myself to stand. 

This has not been a problem for me. I did not buy a drafting chair on purpose. So if I do sit down it becomes very awkward. I do have my gaming computer next to my standing desk so I do sit to play games. If something happens at work I find I have to stand up or it just seems like I am a little child trying to use my parents computer. Barely able to see the keyboard and the bad angle for the monitor, if I don’t stand it puts a strain on my neck.

TL:DR
After one week I like it. I get more done. My feet are a little sore. But other wise it is all good. I am glad I made the switch.

With working from home for the past year and a half I have found I sit way too much. This is the second time in less than 6 months where I have thrown my back out. So I decided I would try a standing desk. I started with a Tripod mounted desk. My feet hurt after just a few hours, but I slowly adjusted. So I decided to do it with a real desk. How ever my office is too small to accommodate another desk. I love my current desk, It has held up well for the past 2 years. And that is saying something as I am usually very hard on desks. So I started looking at risers I could put on my desk. Those were either super expensive or not very good. Then I stumbled on an old blog post that described a $22 dollar Ikea desk . I liked the idea, but I thought I could tweak it a bit to fit my desk better.

First I wanted a longer and narrower table for my monitor. I own a 34″ monitor, and it would not look right on a small table top, Plus coming out 22″ from the back would take up most of my desk top. What I found instead was the LACK tv stand. Same height as the LACK side table, only longer and narrower. The TV stand was $15.

Next with the longer table I would need a longer shelf for my keyboard. This was also important to me as I keep a work journal and write in it all the time. Having room for it on my shelf was important to me. With the table 35″ wide I needed to get a longer shelf than was in the original post, I went with the next size up, an EKBY JÄRPEN. It is also $15.

This shelf is only designed to have brackets 31″ apart, so I knew I would need an additional bracket for the middle to support the shelf. The EKBY VALTER are perfect. This puts the keyboard at exactly the right height for my posture. So I bought 3 of them at $5 each. This brought my total to $45. I already had wood screws, so no extra costs there. I did pick up a pack of felt feet for $2, just so it did not scratch my desk

From there it was time to assemble. The LACK tv stand was super simple to put together. Once that was done I added two of the brackets. One to each of the legs. Then I centered the shelf and started to mount it.

First thing I noticed was that it was very front heavy. It would be very easy to topple over. This is where I was glad I bought an extra bracket. I spun it around so it would not only support the extra length, but also prevent the whole thing from falling over on me.

The finished product sits perfectly for me.