My brother, Yuta, commissioned a standing desk from me for his office. He’s been wanting one for awhile and had an Ikea one for his home office. He complained that it wasn’t sturdy and would wobble every time he touched it. I had also created a standing desk speculatively earlier, so I had him check it out so we can nail the dimensions down. The thing with standing desks is that there is not a standard size like most other furniture because we’re all different heights with different arm lengths and etc, etc.
Since he works for a media production company, he had to have plenty of space to sprawl out papers or editing equipment as well as his big computer monitor. I set about creating different levels of surfaces- one for his monitor, shallow and higher up so the eyes are level with the monitor. I created another level under the main surface so he can quickly clean the worktop and added drawers for extra storage. There is also a shelf towards the bottom where he can rest his feet on, store more things, and also to act as a stabilizing rail.
The difficult part of designing this piece was balancing out the size and bulk of the piece. The top came out to be 30″ wide x 58″ long. I started by cutting away angles- a large one in the front and a subtle one in the back. The desk had to match the rest of the room’s existing furniture (another desk I made for his birthday earlier) so we decided on pine plywood with the edges exposed. I kept going back and forth on this with myself, but I’m glad I stuck with it because the tone, color, and the grain is elegant. I’m especially happy with it because it uses an affordable material and shines it up with the use of thoughtful design and good craftsmanship.
To keep the light color, I used water-based polycrylic. The drawers are made from ash with the drawer front made from sinker cypress. I used UHMW plastic to act as drawer runners so the drawers won’t run a groove into the desk from use over time.
