Working From Home - Properly

Desk is set up and ready for work come Monday

I have been working from home since March. While other countries have been able to relax COVID-19 restrictions by now, the U.S. has done a particularly terrible job at containing the virus and there is no end in sight. Guidance from work has been that work-from-home will continue well into next year. While I have been able to work effectively from various couches and armchairs in the house and on our patio, a month ago I finally admitted to myself that I needed a more proper setup. In the office I spend much more time walking between conference rooms and buildings than at home. Changing meetings now merely involves a couple mouse clicks to join another video conference, when before I had a few minutes to walk to the next conference room and sort my thoughts.

Desk finally arrived

I didn't use my standing desk in the office much, but being at home and not moving much, I think it would be a much more pleasant experience to have one here. Now that I'm used to being able to look up over the top of my laptop screen and watch birds in the garden for a moment, or look through the patio doors outside, I didn't want to place a desk against a wall, and I wanted a view. That removed pretty much every suitable option around the house. In the end we decided that we could rearrange a corner in the living room which I already used for work and video meetings by replacing my trusty IKEA Poäng armchair, and moving a couple other pieces of furniture to make room for the new desk setup,.

Putting it all together

After some research I ordered a small Uplift Desk V2 Bamboo Standing Desk, 42 x 30". The desk has linear actuators to move the top up and down. I added the memory module, so that I can raise and lower the desk to preset heights, and easily switch between standing and sitting positions with no fiddling. I also ordered the Uplift Starling stool. 

Desk in raised position

Uplift Desk apparently is overrun with demand, so it took a month for the desk to be delivered. It finally arrived today and I went to work to set it up. Assembly takes some time, but is easy. The instructions are clear and easy to follow, except for the paragraph describing how to mount the control unit. The way it's done is trivial, but I can see why the tech writer had some trouble finding the right words to describe it.

I'm very happy with the desk, but not quite convinced of the stool yet. Let's see how it works out over the course of next week.