Standing desk setup with IKEA KARLBY Worktop + MAIDeSITe

During and after pandemic, remote working has been a new norm in many companies nowadays. Setting up a home office or working desk at home for long-term purposes is crucial. After working at home for recent years, I personally found out that the need of getting a standing desk to change the poses during the day would be really helpful for health. In this post, I will share my setup for standing desk.

There are several places sharing the experience of setting up a standing desk, and my main interest was using the IKEA KARLBY worktop, and finding the right adjustable electric standing desk frame seperately. After checking out availability of standing desk frames from Amazon UK some of them mentioned on Youtube or Reddit are either not available anymore or cannot be shipped to Ireland), I've decided to try out MAIDeSITe standing desk.

Items used

• IKEA KARLBY Worktop
• IKEA Alex Drawers
• MAIDeSITe: Amazon link
• No-drill cable basket: Amazon link

Before adjustment

Adjusted for standing

IKEA items

Both the worktop and drawers come from IKEA, and you might have seen the desk setup in many places. For KARLBY Worktop, I used the one with the width of 186 cm based on my personal needs and the size of the room. Alex drawers' height is 70 cm, and each has 5 drawer units which provides plenty of storage. Before getting the standing desk frame, I was using the setup without fixing the worktop to the drawers. Instead, the worktop was put on top of those two drawers. It is not wobbly as the worktop itself is quite heavy.

MAIDeSITe Height Adjustable Electric Standing Desk Frame Dual Motor Heavy Duty Steel Stand up Desk with Automatic Memory Smart Keyboard T2 Pro Plus

The 3-stage standing desk frame has a large height adjustment range of 62-125 cm, which can easily meet the needs of people of different heights. The desktop frame is extendable between 100-180 cm in width, fitting desktops between 100-220 cm in width.

Tips for attaching the frame to the worktop

The Karlby worktop is too heavy. Instead of detaching it from current setup and attaching the frame to it then put it back, I chose to keep the IKEA desk setup as it was (i.e., Worktop on top of those two Alex drawers), and assemble the frame first, then attach it from the bottom of the desk.

I found this approach has some pros and cons.

• Again, no need to move the worktop back-and-forth, which is very heavy.
• No need for measuring the frame width suitable for the current setting. Before fixing the frame with a certain width, you can push the frame into the bottom of your desk and extend to the end of those two drawers. 
• You need to drill the worktop from the bottom to attach the frame to it, which might be the main drawback here.

Tips

• Test the height adjustment is working for frame before attaching it to the worktop.
• Remember the height of Alex drawer is 70 cm, set up the minimum height of the frame to 70+ first.
• If you also decide to use any cable management basket, adjust the frame height to high enough to arrange your cables which was quite convinient for me.
• A thiner extension lead would be better to be used with the cable basket (I used 25 mm one).

I've been using the setup for the last two weeks, so far it is quite stable and satisfactory.

I hope this post is helpful for you setting up a standing desk, and enjoy your remote work.