The toll of a good job in tech is that I spend more than twelve hours a day sitting. That’s bad, very bad. Before Covid, I was at least travelling in between, but during Covid, I was sitting constantly. Oh, my hips, they suffered a lot. I have an excellent place to work, a fine-tuned workstation, but unfortunately, my desk is fixed to the wall and can’t move up and down.

I was thinking about how to make a standing workplace in my apartment. I have things all over the place; every inch of space is used. Finally, I found a corner in the study where I put my biggest monitor, which travels with me to my cabin for the summer. Yes, I always need a large monitor; a laptop screen is not enough for me.

Thus began my diabolical plan. First, I bought a regular wooden stand so that the monitor would be at eye level. I also bought one more stand that is five centimetres higher and used for my laptop.

I don't like to use the keyboard of my laptop, and definitely not while standing; it's too small an area for me. I wanted to put my keyboard and mouse somewhere around the monitor. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a regular narrow long desk. I had a limitation on both sides; I had to follow through – the work area on the right and the end of the table on the left.

So, I ended up at IKEA; I can always find a cheap solution there. Guess what? IKEA didn’t disappoint. The desk I was looking for was actually a shelf, BURHULT, which I bought for a few euros.

But the board has to be on something, and I’ve already been involved in 3D printing here. I modelled the two legs that the shelf fits into, making sure it was really tight; I didn't want the desk to be able to move in any way.

I printed it in 0.3 millimetre draft quality so that the shelf holds in the legs and doesn’t wobble or fall out. The leg itself is 22 centimetres high, so I tested the limits of my printer again.

The legs got printed on the first try; no problems at all. I stuck some non-slip stickers on the legs from the bottom. In the end, they might have been unnecessary.

The draft print quality doesn’t look the best, but the desk holds really firmly. Finally, and most importantly, I can take the legs apart at any time and hide them under the monitor; I appreciate that a lot.

In the end, I can fit both the keyboard and the mouse area on this desk. I was afraid the table would fall on my left side to the ground, but months have passed and it hasn't happened once.

It all worked out to the last millimetre. The laptop stand is just high enough to give the laptop the right room to breathe.

I also put an ethernet cable under the Creative wall so that I could be sure of the cable connection.

If I don't want to have the laptop at the bottom, I can still put the laptop in the cabinet. Why? Sometimes I have a lot of video calls, and have you ever tried taking a selfie from the bottom angle? Perhaps the only worse view of yourself is when you accidentally turn on the front camera while on your phone in bed at night :)

It looks like a monstrous solution, but it is really compact in the end. Honestly, that was a bit of a by-product. The whole thing can be folded into a small box, and I still have half my desk free, which is useful when I create stuff right next to it.

That is what it looks like assembled. I'm very happy with the space. I've had it for months, and I use it mainly on weekends when I don't want to spend too much time on the computer. I put the laptop here, and suddenly I'm very quick with any task, which means I can leave the computer area ASAP :)

STL file

• Legs for IKEA BURHULT