A good desk can be expensive,
even more so a standing desk.
So instead of paying a premium price,
I decided to create
my own custom wood-stained IKEA standing desk.
Let's take a look, shall we?
(uplifting music)
Thanks to Surfshark for sponsoring this video.
Now, if you want to work from home,
are currently a student, or you just need a nice space
to work on, a good quality desk is
one of the most important things to have.
These days, people spend up to eight hours a day
at their desk, and it's at this desk
where you earn all of your income,
or you set up the rest of your life by studying
either at school or university.
Now, I've been very vocal about the importance
of a standing desk and the associated health benefits,
so in this video, I'm going to show you
how I created my desk and its custom stain,
and give you some ideas and tips
if you create something similar.
Let me just switch up the shot real quick.
(host sighs)
That's better.
Okay, so with standing desks,
a lot of the times they can be really, really expensive,
and even then, you can't customize them
to suit your own personal preference.
This is where making your own standing desk can be a
really fun process.
Choosing the frame, desktop, and also experimenting
with different stains.
And I personally really like putting
together my own custom standing desks,
because in the future, if I want to change the stain
or the tabletop, for example, I can.
Now, the first step in this process is finding a frame.
So there's a lot of different options out there,
such as cheap ones from IKEA, or even eBay.
The IKEA ones weren't my style,
so I ended up picking mine up from a random office website
for around 280 US dollars,
probably about five years ago, now.
Now it doesn't really matter which one you get,
but do try to get a relatively high-quality one,
and also make sure that the length is appropriate
for the desktop that you want to buy.
Bear in mind the length of
most standing desks are adjustable.
Now, at this point, I would also recommended against getting
one of those hand-crank standing desks.
The point of a standing desk is to be able to
easily transition from sit
to stand multiple times during the day,
and it's going to be really off-putting
if you have to stand at your desk
for two minutes, cranking it up and down,
just to be able to stand.
I honestly think most of the people
that buy these hand-crank standing desks end up
not even using the standing function,
and they just sit at their desks, instead.
Now, moving on to desktop, I've seen a couple
of videos out there where people completely make
their own desktop from scratch
with bits of two-by-four or reclaimed wood,
and while that is really, really cool
and very interesting, for me, personally,
I'm not really into the whole woodworking thing,
and I don't have the tools and the gear
and the equipment in order to make
my own custom desktop.
Now, IKEA is a really good option for this
if you don't have a local store that does wood near you.
Most people tend to go for something like a Karlby,
but it's not very deep, at only 63 centimeters,
and it's also not a blank canvas.
Something like a Karlby is generally a solid piece
of wood, and then you have little strips
on the top that have been prestained
to look a certain way,
and that's not really the route
that we want to take for our custom desktop.
So instead, I would recommended looking
in the kitchen section of IKEA.
I ended up going for the Gerton tabletop,
which, at 155 centimeters long
and 75 centimeters deep, is the perfect desk size,
in my opinion.
And it's also made of solid beechwood,
so it's a very, very sturdy tabletop,
and you're not going to experience
any kind of bowing in the middle
if you have a heavy monitor, for example.
Now, these thick, solid wood desktops
are really good if you're like me
and you tend to mount multiple monitors
directly to the desk, and it's much better
than something like a Lagkapten,
which literally made of cardboard paper inside.
If you put anything heavy on those things,
they're basically just going to snap right in the middle,
and all your expensive gear is going to be kaput.
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so there's no risk in trying it out.
Anyway, let's get back to video.
Now, moving on to the staining process,
and guys, this is pretty much the funnest part
of the entire process.
I recommend starting off by sanding down the surface
of the tabletop with a low-grit sandpaper,
and then finishing it off with a hybrid sandpaper
to smooth everything out and prepare
it for the staining process.
However, if you don't want to bother with this,
you can actually just go straight
to the staining process.
In my experience,
it didn't really make a massive difference.
Now, I ended up going through about four different cans
of stain before I found one I really liked.
So something I recommend doing to actually test
out the stains and save you having
to sand back the top of the desktop
when you're finished is actually
to flip the desktop over, apply the stain
to the underside so you can test it,
and then, when you're happy with one,
flip it back over and apply it to the top.
Now, remember to let the stain dry
for at least a few hours, and this is
so you can see the true color.
You might also realize that you need several applications
to bring out the wood grain and deepen the color.
At this point, obviously,
I do recommend reading the specific instructions
for the stain you've selected,
because some of them can vary.
Now, I was really picky and ended up
completely sanding down the tabletop multiple times,
because I just wasn't happy with the final product.
I finally settled on actually mixing two different types
of stains together, the main one being a
really dark wood grain called Black Japan,
and this created a really rich, dark, moody wood color.
Now, once the stain is fully dry,
I recommend letting it dry at least 24 hours.
Again, read the instructions for your specific stain.
You can add a protective topcoat,
but I didn't do it in my situation
because I was probably going to sand it down
and do it all again in six months
to try out a different type of stain.
So at this point, you've done the custom stained wood top,
and you can start on the build process
of your overall custom standing desk.
Now, the first thing you're going to have to do,
obviously, is build your standing desk frame.
Make sure you make the length
of the standing desk frame long enough.
I recommend leaving about an inch or two on the sides,
as well, in case you want to mount anything
to the side of the desk.
And make sure, when you're attaching the actual frame
of the desk to the top, you really make it secure.
So get a drill or a screwdriver, or whatever you have,
and some wood screws, and really make sure
that's secured, because if you ever move
or need to drag the desk around,
most people are going to end up lifting it up
by the actual desktop, and you don't want
your desktop ripping off when someone tries to move it,
and all of your expensive gear falling to the floor.
Now, at this point, I also recommend doing
some cable management underneath the desk,
so you can get crazy with this,
and a little bit creative.
Personally, I just got a cable management tray from IKEA.
You can also get these from eBay and other websites.
There's a lot of different options out there,
but this just helps keep the underside
of your desk relatively neat
and tuck all those excess cables away.
If you're like me, you can also attach a power strip
to the underside, and this means
that you only need one single plug going
from the desk into your wall,
and it gives you a really, really clean
and minimal final product.
Now, if you want to really protect the surface
of your desktop from stains or spills,
or even condensating water from a glass
of cold water, for example, I do recommend picking
up a desk mat.
I'll link the one I'm using down below,
by the way, if you want to pick that one up,
and if you want to add a little bit of flair
to your desktop, you can also add a LED strip at the back.
I'm using a five-year-old Philips Hue strip
that I bought years ago.
It still totally works.
And this is cool, because it connects to your phone,
and you can pretty easily change the background lighting,
if you're into that kind of thing.
So at this point, congratulations.
You have your own custom stained standing desk,
and the fun isn't over, guys.
At this point, you can continue to work on it.
So if you're not happy with the stain,
you can sand it back and try some other stuff, like I did.
You can switch out the desktop,
or even the desk frame, and you can basically customize it
and do whatever you want with it,
because everything is customizable.
Now, at the end of the day, if you're
not 100% satisfied with the final product,
for example, there's a few flaws,
if you're like me, you'll learn to love them,
because you did make this thing yourself.
And if that's not enough, just remember that
you saved probably a couple of hundred bucks doing
it yourself instead of paying some random company a 50
or 100% markup to make it for you.
(reflective music)