DIY Plywood Edge Monitor Stand

Since moving to Vancouver I have transitioned into a sit-stand workstation. After I had my desk set up and I started working though, I realized that my monitor was too low. I got super inspired by this Custom Monitor Stand by Ugmonk so I thought I would do my own take on it. I picked up the same legs he used but instead of using a shelf and staining it, I glued two pieces of plywood together and painted the top. I wanted to have that raw plywood edge. Here is how I did it!

Materials

4" Capita Legs from Ikea

2 pieces of birch plywood cut to size (9" x 20")

Black paint (or your choice)

Hand planer 

Driver

PL Premium  

I started off by measuring the size I wanted my stand to be. I didn't want it to take up too much room on my desk but it needed to be deep enough for my monitor. I settled on 9" deep by 20" wide. Jeff from Ugmonk built his long enough to put speakers on which looks awesome too; if my desk was a little bigger I might have opted for a longer length. 

Since we are in Vancouver with minimal tools and no workshop, I had Home Depot cut down the plywood for me. I used PL Premium to affix the two pieces of plywood together and clamped them together with some clamps I rented from Vancouver Tool Library. I decided to use two pieces glued because I wanted a chunky, substantial edge but It would still look great with just one piece.

Once the PL was dry, we planed down the edges with a hand planer we rented from VTL. This evened out the edge as the plywood wasn't cut perfect. I then took some 150 grit sandpaper to the entire thing to knock down the sharp edges and smooth out the top and sides. Once this was done I painted both the top and bottom black and left the edges raw.

Once the paint was dry I installed the legs which I picked up from Ikea, popped it on the desk, and tested it out with my monitor.

The stand raised up the screen to eye level, greatly improving the functionality of the desk.