My Standing Desk Journey — A Guide to Fix Any Top on IKEA Skarsta
Standing desk was in my spotlight for years but never made it to the actionable priority. Until working from home era forced me to do just that, in a peculiar way.
After full year of sitting 40 hours a week (mostly 60, but ok) in front of the makeshift workstation made of a cheap folding table and my 10 years old sliding chair, my neck shoulder and back took control of my brain and decided to invest in my most expensive office furniture ever.
Demand and supply showed their true colors in this market. Earlier last year the price of electric motorized standing desk in Thailand was around the high-end of 1x,000THB. An IKEA Bekant motorized standing desk’s tag price was 22,000THB, before dropping to 15,000 - 17,000THB very recently, which is far behind to compete with local brands in the range of 13,000THB plus/minus. Even these local ones were dropped to 11,000THB at the lowest due to more number of sellers.
Frugal to the core, I opted for the hand-crank option instead of these models. The famous IKEA’s Skarsta was my aim. The full set costs around 7,000THB which is reasonably friendly than the others, and I can spend a few more calories manually cranking it up-and-down, so why not? But demand and supply played the trick again, none of those were available since I started looking for one in February (yes, I kept monitoring them).
Fast forward to July, (bare in mind I was waiting since February), I saw the little green dot on IKEA website while slacking from work. It’s the Skarsta’s underframe. I made an order without thinking, hoping the top would come in few weeks. **Spoiler alert**: It didn’t.
Last week of August, I called IKEA to ask for restocking. “We have some problem with supplier. You may recheck in November but the chance is slim” they said. Hopeless, I searched for an alternative and randomly found an interesting thread where someone was fitting a Gerton top on Bekant. Or if you’re in the UK, you can order a solid top for Skarsta from this website. None of these seem applicable in my context.
With the frame sitting in my house for two months, I must do something. Here’s what I did (I’ll put the list of items again at the end):
- The original Skarsta top is either 120cm x 70cm or 160cm x 80cm. So I ordered a joint rubber wood plank 130cm x 70cm just to make it unique. (first time ordering a piece of wood online, an eclectic experience)
- The top came unfinished. I looked up the methods and found that I can use water-based Polyurethane to coat the surface without mixing it with any solvent. Went to the store near by and got a small gallon (1L) of matte Polyurethane, fine sandpaper (no 360), and a brush. The trick is to paint the first layer as thin as possible, then sanding it well. The second and third layer can be thicker, keep sanding and dry-cleaning the surface between each layer. Better do it in the sunny day.
- The most worrying part is the fastening. I followed an idea from the thread about Gerton top with Bekant frame by placing the frame up-side-down- over the table top and mark all the drilling points. Needless to say, this has to be as precise as possible.
- To get the right measurement, I brought original screws that came with the frame to the store and ask the staff to find the wood nuts that fit them. It turned out that Skarsta 2020 use twelve of 6mm metal screws to attach the top. So I got these 6mm x 13mm wood nuts and a 10mm drill head (like this) to poke the holes. There’s no need to use hammer drill on the wood, even a small IKEA Fixa screwdriver can get the job done. During the drill, don’t forget to mark the depth with some duct tape. In my case the wood is 20mm thick, so I’d drilled 12mm and hammer the nuts down to fit the surface.
Final BOM:
- Major material: Joint rubber wood plank 130cm x 70cm -> biggest Skarsta’s top dimension is 160cm x 80cm, any size within these range should fit. Just be precise and center-align everything when marking the holes. On the weight, Skarsta’s maximum load is around 60kg without a top. Simply calculating that, you can figure out the remaining load for your screens after applying preferred top.
- Surface work: matte Polyurethane, sandpaper (no 360 or no 320), a brush -> this can vary by the material you choose for the top.
- Attachment: 6mm x 13mm wood nuts, 10mm drill head, an electric screwdriver of your choice -> smaller nuts should fit as well if you place flat washers under the smaller screws and tighten them to the frame. But are you going to waste all those 12 standard screws?
The total cost for the top came at around 1,600THB (without the Fixa screwdriver, of course). In comparison to original one at 2,000THB without the plan to restock, I consider this a win. Would you agree?