Depending on the quality and size of your office desk furniture, expect to pay anywhere from $150 to $2000 for a complete setup. For $150 you can get new fiberboard furniture, or, if you are lucky, good used solid wood furniture. New solid wood furniture is going to cost at least $800, and probably more like $2,000.
Seriously consider opening the phone book and calling all your local thrift and second-hand furniture stores before you spend hundreds, even a thousand dollars on a desk. I found an ideal solid oak desk at a thrift store for $100 just a few months ago. To buy it at retail price would have cost me over $500.
Before we get into the different kinds of office desks -- hutches, "l desks", computer desks, simple worktables, and more -- take a moment to think about how you work and where you will be working. If you are in a 300 foot square office, a big executive l shaped desk is not going to fit... unless you need that desk so badly to get your work done that you are OK with having nothing else in the room but a filing cabinet.
If you are tight on space, consider a hutch desk. Hutch desks use that wonderful tight space trick of "using the walls" or "going up" because they have high backs. The hutch kind of desks have a basic desk surface, then a solid back that goes up to become cabinets or book shelves. You are basically getting a desk and a bookshelf in one piece of furniture. If you do not have much floor space, the only place to expand is to use the walls.
That said, some people feel a little claustrophobic working in the hutch desks after about four to six hours. This is especially true with the convenient but sometimes uncomfortable cabinet desks, where you open two big doors in front and basically have an office in a box. It is nice to be able to close the doors and not see all your papers, but if you work on a lot of projects at once, or if you like to spread out while you work, a desk like that will make you crazy. I know -- I tried one. Ultimately it became a bookshelf a nd a filing cabinet, and I ended up working on the kitchen table. But again, it is nice to just close the doors and not see all the work you have to do.
If you will be working in an office, or if you will be meeting clients or customers while you are working at your desk, a hutch desk definitely will not do. In this situation, you want a desk that is closed in the front, so clients can not see your knees, and, ideally, your feet. L shaped desks are especially nice here because you can have a clear space on the top of your desk to focus on client paperwork, and another half of your desk for your keyboard or your other projects.
Take a stroll around your local Staples, Office Depot or Office Max to see which kind of desk will work for you. Then, when you know what design you want, head to the web. Or, if you are lucky, you will find something locally. If you are really lucky, you will find a terrific used desk for less than a third of what it would have cost new. Th en you can spend the money you've saved on starting your new business.
Katie Hoffman writes about how to tame the clutter, including how to pick closet organization systems and the best closet organization ideas.
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