Live Edge Electronically Adjustable Height Desk

Whhoooaaa what a long title. Sorry, I tried to keep it short but that was the best I could do.

In this guide I’m going to teach you how transform your regular desk into one that raises to whatever height you want at the touch of a button. This provides a great ergonomic benefit for the user. Sitting for too long can lead to all sort of issues. Also being able to micro adjust the height of your desk on the fly is great for eliminating fatigue even if you’re sitting at the desk.

So recently I was in a suppliers showroom and I saw they had a selection of desks that raised and lowered at the touch of a button. Being the tech geek I am I was really immediately interested. Interested until I saw the price tag that is. They were selling generic blank table tops for $1,000+. Not really what I was looking to spend on a desk right now, and I already had a pretty nice live edge desk that I had made a couple of years ago. Pictured below:

After doing some research online I found out that a few companies were selling kits that you could use to upgrade your existing desk. Perfect. This will allow me to keep my existing desk surface and still have the cool factor of a desk that goes up and down. The best price I could find on a set of legs was from a company called primecables. At the time the kit cost me about $300 CAD, but their price seems to fluctuate quite a bit. AS of the writing of this article the price is $250 CAD. Here’s the amazon listing:
Amazon.ca

A couple of days later (thanks Amazon!) I had a giant box waiting for me on my door step. Let’s crack this bad boy open and get to work.

At this point I’m starting to get a little over whelmed by the number of parts. Hows this all going to go together?

Just keep calm and follow the instructions. Eventually I ended up with something that resembled a set of desk legs.

Now we’re ready to do the transplant. The new legs are ready to go.

I flipped over my old desk and started removing the existing black pipe legs that I had made a couple of years ago. Luckily I didn’t do anything too crazy to attach them to the desk surface, just simple screws. 5 minutes later I had the legs off of the desk surface.

With the desk top already face down on the ground I flipped over the new adjustable legs and got to work. I took some measurement and made sure my legs were exactly center of the desk and screwed them in.

My desk is made of walnut, which is very hard, so before I installed any screws I used a drill and pre-drilled each of the screw holes into the walnut. If I skipped this step I probably would’ve snapped every screw I tried to install.  It’s good practice to pre-drill any screw holes when you’re working with hardwoods of any type.

After I installed the legs there was still a few more things that needed to be screwed to the underside of the desk. One is a power transformer for the motor that drives the legs.  I screwed this at the very rear of the desk so that it would be hard to see and out of the way.  After that I installed a power bar on the right hand side. This will allow me to plug in all of my computer stuff and keep the wires tucked out of the way.

 

On the left hand side I installed the control panel. This little digital keypad is what I use to control the desk height. A couple screws in the back of it and it was securely attached to the desk. Then I had to trace the wire coming out of it back to the transformer.

After I flipped it back over, I reinstalled my computer. Here’s the finished product. Not bad looking if I dont say.  This is it in the sitting position. Tailored to my height when I’m sitting in my desk chair.

Here’s what it looks like at it’s maximum height. I’m 6’2″ and I dont even use it this high when I want to stand at the desk. I imagine these legs would be good for anyone who was 6’6″ or shorter.

Now that it’s done I couldn’t imagine not having a standing desk. I feel like I’m much more productive in short burst while standing. If I have to use the desk for less than 30 minutes I’ll put it in standing mode. If I’m going to be at my computer for more than that I’ll usually just put it in the sit mode.

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions and I’ll be happy to answer them.