If you really want to economise of your office furniture you could attempt to make your own desk. In order to do this there are a number of strategies you could employ.

Home Made Office Furniture

First you need to find a desktop – many people find that a door is a suitable size and shape, so its probably best to start looking here. Firstly, try to find a flat, wooden door. Taking down your office door would be very convenient, but make sure that you don’t need it later – putting the door back is harder than taking it down.

A Perfect Desktop

Doors with panels or mouldings do not make good desktops, equipment will probably be quite wobbly and you will find it difficult to write on an uneven surface. Glass doors are quite a good idea, they are usually flat and can make a stylish desk. At this point, remove the door handle and any other protrusions, eg knockers – but don’t block up the holes, they can make useful cable ports for all that equipment you will need to put on your desk.

Now you need to find some method of supporting your desktop. Those plastic bread crates you see lying around at the back of supermarkets are a good starting point. They come in a wide range of shapes, sizes and colours so with a bit of hunting around at the back of Tesco’s you can pick up a bargain - every little helps! You can stack them in a combination of long and short edges to give you a height adjustable desk. You could be the envy of your fellow workers with the first hand-built sit-stand height adjustable desk. Also, if you pile up the bread crates with the open side facing you, this makes a handy storage are for your filing and storage. Bread crates

Office Furniture?

also make a perfect CPU holder, in that they offer the airflow required to keep you computer cool and they have excellent cable accessibility. In place of bread crates you could try making legs out of wood or metal, but in my experience they are rarely successful – they usually end up very wobbly and uneven and - in any case - are very difficult to fix to a glass or metal door.

The next thing you need to worry about is somewhere to sit. Obviously you will want something that looks like an executive office chair – a standard dining room chair or barstool is not going to do the job. The best place to start looking is your local car breakers yard –

Your new Executive Office Chair

with a bit of imagination and effort a front seat of a car is a good starting point. You will also have the choice of hard-wearing brushed nylon seat covers, or if you are lucky, a nice leather seat from a Jaguar. If you can find one with a seat belt still attached, so much the better – see below. Now you need to find something to stand the car seat on – back to the bread crates! If you have a seat with the seat belt still attached you can use this to fix your new office chair to the crate, if not you will need to find some string or packing tape.

Office Seating