I’ve been intrigued by the online discussion about standing desks for a while now. Heck, it’s clear enough to anybody willing to think about it that just sitting, all day, every day, can’t be good for you. Add to it that I’m 6-foot-4 (that’s 193 cm for my two Canadian readers) and it’s not so easy to cram my legs underneath the desk, and I end up needing to unkink myself every hour or so during the day. Even doing that I still end up with achy legs, a sore elbow from leaning on it too much, and a sore back.

(To be fair, the sore back could be more due to the slouching I do in bed at night reading and watching tv. And the fact that I’m not getting any younger. 35 still feels like it’s on the happy end of my 30′s. Next year ain’t gonna feel that way.)

There are some ridiculous cool standing desk assemblies out there, at ridiculously uncool prices. Not in this guy’s budget. Now, I work for $MEGACORP, so there’s probably some bureaucratic process I could go through to make the request for a standing desk, and some ergonomic person would eventually sign off on it, and 6 weeks from now I might have something. But I really wanted to try the idea out sooner. Here’s what I ended up with (click on it to see the full-sized pic):

I ended up spending just shy of $20 at Lowe’s for a nice piece of coated shelf board for my table tops, and then a chunk of 1×8 for the legs. My monitors now sit 20″ above my desk, and my keyboard/mouse about 15″. I’m about 3 hours into using it so far, and so far so good. We’ll see how sore my feet and legs are tomorrow. I’m actually sort of easing into it, since my all-afternoon meeting today and tomorrow means I’ll only be standing for half-days.

I figure if I decide I like it, later on I can make the ergonomic request and see about a “real” standing desk. For now, though, this’ll do.