DIY Standing Desk How I Made The Perfect Sit/Stand Desk For $400

By Neville

April 15, 2020

I accidentally built my dream sit/standing desk, here's how.

As a person who has worked from home in some sort for 15+ years, I've been through every iteration of desk you can imagine.

My "Dream Desk" would include:

✅ Adjustable height at the push of a button.

✅ Drawers (surprisingly hard to find on a standing desk).

✅ Cable management space (to keep everything neat).

✅ Backlighting for webcam no matter what height.

This combination was weirdly hard to find, especially finding a standing desk with DRAWERS.

I'm not sure why this is so hard, but most standing desks you find have no drawers, and I love keeping small supplies available in drawers, and not having to reach for external storage.

For this reason I ended up first purchasing this desk for $2,100:

The Rocket Mission Evolve Desk. Starting at $1,890.

That starting price of $1,890 is pretty steep, but for the perfect desk it's worth it. After all the options, my order came to around $2,100.

HOWEVER, I ENDED UP NOT BUYING THIS FULL DESK!

I had ordered this desk around Christmas, and each is custom made, taking between 6-8 weeks. Well Amazon has spoiled me with 1-2 day shipping, so by day 3 I was already restless to get my desk 😂

Roughly day 4 after the order, a big package arrives. Turns out it was just the desk frame, but without the top of the desk.

I contemplated having to wait for nearly 2 more months to get the custom built desk, when I had this sudden flash of brilliance:

"Can I just put the sit/standing legs on my current desk?" 🤔 🤔 🤔

I don't know why I never thought of this before.

I really liked my current desk. It had drawers, was the perfect size, I took out the back panel and made my own "cable management" feature in it, and already had a proper webcam lighting setup on it.

So this desk was ALMOOOOSSSST perfect but it didn't have an adjustable height feature:

I figured I already have the perfect desk, and now I had an adjustable height desk frame sitting in my office for the next few weeks.....

So I started setting up the desk frame to see if I could attach it to my current desk:

This is the sit/stand frame without the top of the desk attached.

This particular frame cost around $299, but if you do a search from standing desk on Amazon you can find ones for far cheaper.

I setup the desk frame they sent me, and with a regular drill just screwed in the previous desk top I currently had in the office.

Screwed the current desk top onto the standing frame:

It worked perfect! Then setup all frame electronics:

Had a sit/stand in an hour!

The frame still looked good in the home office:

Go from sitting to standing and the webcam lighting follows the desk:

I cancelled my order for the expensive Rocket Mission desk since I already had a good setup I liked, and now it had a sit/stand function too.

Basically if you already like your current desk, but it isn't a sit/stand desk, then adding on a sit/stand frame is the perfect solution!

Your current desk

Adjustable desk frame

The Perfect Sit/Stand Desk!!

I know it sounds dumb because this is so simple, but I personally spent a very long time trying to find the perfect desk that met all my requirements:

✅ Adjustable height at the push of a button.

✅ Drawers (surprisingly hard to find on a standing desk).

✅ Cable management space (to keep everything neat).

✅ Backlighting for webcam no matter what height.

...and the thought of slapping on a sit/stand desk frame to my current desk never occurred to me until after I ordered a very expensive desk and the frame came first. Hope this helps!