I've been interested in standing desks for a while. things like: he who sits the All the options online are expensive. Ryan Witt from Decisive and I combined our brains to see if we could come up with a better solution: It's a cheap solution made from Ikea parts for as low as $22. just put it on top of your existing desk. Ergonomics are pretty simple. You want your set up to look like this: There are really 2 parts of this: monitor height and keyboard height. The key thing is: you don't want your monitor and keyboard to be on the same surface. You'll get neck cramps, or cut off blood circulation to your fingers. When you're working in a coworking space (we're in General Assembly in New York) or in a regular office, the friction to go from sitting to standing is usually high: Marco Arment while working at Tumblr built his standing desk from stacking cans of soda stacking Ryan and I did it with parts from Ikea for $22 (+ tax) Note: Make sure you get an 11 inch shelf + 11 inch brackets.
you don't need to screw in the shelf to the bracket (unless you want ^ The desks in action. Hundreds and hundreds of people have posted their build pictures on twitter, in the comments, and online. If you build it please share your pics! Consider getting yourself another Lack Side Table ($7.99) to double the surface area for your monitor. This option gives you space for a laptop stand. Also consider the Dioder LED set ($39.99) to add some color to your desk. It gives it that lowrider feel. Though be wary, that the LED lights are more expensive than the entire standing desk. Have you built an amazing standing desk? Email me colin at customer dot io, or add it in the comments here. I want to see it. improvements on this design? Let me know too.I hope you enjoyed your weekend, we did, it was a busy one for us; from working on our yard to attending one of my best friend’s baby shower, to celebrating Greek Easter with hubby’s family. Here in Montreal, it feels as if summer has already arrived, I’ve been sporting flip-flops and high heel sandals all weekend making sure to enjoy every second of these beautiful sunny days.
As promised, please let me share with you one of the projects I’ve tackled during these last few weeks: my two black Dalfred IKEA bar stools got a spring makeover. We have all seen many stool transformations all over Pinterest and the blogsphere and today I wanted to share mine with you. We’ve had these two IKEA bar stools since the first week we moved into our house, they used to look good in our all white kitchen but after our main floor renovation they didn’t match our kitchen style anymore. The bar stools looked old, they had craft paint on them from my previous DIY projects and I just didn’t like them anymore. And of course knowing me, I had to do something about it. I decided to paint them and give them a new purpose in our house. I cleaned them up as they had accumulated dust behind our living room sofa. Sanding them was necessary before applying the paint. For this project, I used Krylon’s Dual Paint + Primer sun yellow gloss indoor-outdoor paint. For furniture, I prefer applying a primer before painting it but I wanted to give this primer and paint in one a try and see if it could do it’s job.
It did but to achieve a complete and smooth finish I had to use 4 cans of spray paint. So, I think next time I will use a primer before painting furniture. As mentioned on my previous post, this was my first spray paint project of the year and I was a little rusty. First, I didn’t realize that the spray nozzle had fallen off in the cap, so when I did my first coat it left a large glop of paint on my fingers. Next, I neglected to follow the pattern of a quick motion to avoid drip marks on the stool. After a few sprays it came back to me. I can’t believe I had forgotten how to spray paint. So what was my spray painting method? I started by spray painting outside of the stools and lightly sprayed in a smooth continuous sweeping motion from left to right to create a smooth coverage with no drip marks. Hubby helped me with the rest of the spray painting because that’s when our little boy decided it was time for him to take a nap and I had no choice but to go inside with him. I recommend, leaving these to dry for 24 hours in a dry area where there isn’t much sun or heat.
If you have a garage I recommend you working on these type of projects there. I worked in my balcony and yard because our garage is full right now. Before applying a second coat, I lightly sanded them to remove the extra paint and the drips of paint left on the legs of the stools: I applied a second coat of paint the next day and a third coat of paint last Thursday to make sure I didn’t miss any spots and let them dry for another 24 hours outside. See that old slide behind, it’s not ours; it was our neighbor’s, they gave it to us last summer, we never used it, hubby left it outside the entire winter and now it’s rusted. Planning on getting rid of it this coming Saturday: Next morning, I brought them back to our kitchen to see how they fit with our new style. I loved the look; they brighten up the space. After I had applied the third coat of paint, they looked almost perfect but they weren’t so I decided to try the “distress” look. Please, let me show you how: I decided to sand the edges of the seat and of the legs to lightly distress them, I used two types of sandpaper: 150 (from Gator finishing products) to remove the paint and give it a distress look and then 400 to create a smooth surface:
It took me two days to achieve the look I was going for because I wasn’t sure how much sanding it needed. I love how they look, lightly distressing the edges was a great idea: This is how they look in our eat-in-kitchen. I love yellow but not everyone is a fan. Yellow is a happy color, when spring arrives I’ve always liked adding yellow accessories to my decor. Last summer, I bought 4 beautiful yellow pillows for our living room sofa, they added a pop of color. this is a close-up picture, unfortunately, when I took these pictures there was too much light coming from the big window, so you are not able to see how the legs look after I distressed them with the sandpaper: I love how these bar stools turned out, they look great against the dark floors. I put 2 coats of oil-based polyurethane to make sure they were well protected. The weather was so beautiful this weekend, we spent most of our days outdoors, that’s when I had this great idea; to use them outside.
First, we used them in our balcony as a side table to hold drinks: Then, I placed them in our yard and used them as plant holder stands: I love how I can place these in any space of our house and they look great. For now, I have decided to keep them in our yard and continue using them as plant holder stands for these beautiful flowers my parents got for us this weekend: Now, I need to go to the hardware store and get us new plant holders for these flowers and more lawn fertilizer. So many more projects left to tackle in our yard but I will write about them in another post. You might have noticed our tiny yard but that’s what you get when you live in a skinny townhouse in the city of Montreal: I love spring and hope this beautiful weather will last! Are you working on new projects? Thanks again for stopping by! Linking up at these fun parties Tag: Dalfred IKEA bar stools, distressing, distressing furniture IKEA bar stools, diy project, plant holder stands, sanding, yard, yellow paint