Woodwork / standing desk / family workshop

Motorised Standing Desk

Height-adjustable desk.

Watch Stills

Daniel and his son standing beside the finished timber top for a motorised desk. — Underside of the finished top, with the obligatory "banana" for scale

BUILD SPEC 1800 x 800

Timber: 32mm plywood, with laminate flooring glued down as the working surface. Worked really well.
Top dimensions: 1800mm by 800mm, with curved corners. Big enough for a very large monitor.
Lifting frame: I bought Desktronic dual-motor frame kit - it is really good.
Joinery: Curves cut with a jigsaw and cleaned up with a sander. The laminate went down first and was trimmed flush afterwards with a router.
Finish: Ply edge left visible and lacquered.
Build time: About three hours, end to end.

What went wrong

Nothing. Three hours, and it's great, and MUCH cheaper than buying one (but you do need the tools and space I guess).

The version I nearly built

I did sketch a different version first: four lifting points, a heavy glass top, and the legs actuated with with belts, screws and one motor (visible under the glass).

The surface rabbit hole

There was also a whole materials detour: glass, orange Marmoleum, birch ply, adhesive, trowel notches, corner radii, edge sealing and whether a desk top should be a small furniture laminate experiment. The final build is simpler: 32mm ply with a hard laminate surface, visible lacquered edge, and no fragile layer stack waiting to become annoying.