Here is a tip for our customers shopping for new ideas. Subscribe to a sophisticated new design site called www.Houzz.com and you will receive a periodic email full of photos and ideas for remodeling your abode. As you well know most home design web sites are full of junkie advertising and very little content (and the content can be really dumb). This new site is just the opposite.Almost no ads and deep content. Houzz is a forum for designers to post their favorite project photos and contact information. The site search engine does an excellent job of sorting it out for you by category. Don't take my word for it, check it out yourself!

This home office design is very attractive in a color sense and that is why it was selected for the lead image in an online home office gallery. But from a healthy computing point of view it has several problems. First the sharp edged desktop will really start to wear on the wrist and forearm after a few months, especially for an older person. Light reflections off the high gloss top will become annoying to the eyes when the lamp is on or bright sunlight shines through the window. The chair is the type you sit back in rather than being adjustable to let you sit forward to work if desired. The chair is also not height adjustable (but it looks great from the perspective of a decorator). Lastly valuable desktop work surface area is wasted by not extending the desktop over the machine and pedestal at the corners. If you add a laptop to this desktop you have practically no room for any of the accessories now present. Perhaps its just a pretty place to write checks and not really work, but the multiple file holders on the shelf says otherwise.

The problem with designs like this to the unaware is that they lead the consumer to spend their precious earnings on objects that will later be sold at next to nothing on CraigsList as they come to the realization its not really a pleasant place to work.

This is a great idea for a sturdy, inexpensive desk. I have always wondered why more folks with tight budgets don’t just find a blemished door at a discount, buy some sawhorses or used pedestal cabinets, paint them or stain the top, and there you go, a much better desk than the big box retailer sells. Though heavy, exterior solid core doors feel and act like real furniture because they have weight and mass. You need to bevel or radius the edge where you will be working to soften the impact on your wrists and forearm.