When we ordered our bathroom cabinets for our masterbath, the cabinet companies had office cabinetry available in their product lines. Is that what you're referring to?

We have a 78" long desk on one wall of our kitchen. It's done with the same white Brookhaven cabinets as the other 2 walls of our perimeter (fourth wall is open to the great room. The desk is 30" high, 24" deep and has a matching wood top (which I may come to regret as I tend to be hard on desks.) The base has 2 two foot wide lateral file cabinet drawers on each side of the 30 knee hole opening and a 30" wide pencil drawer above the knee hole. I'll use at least 2 of the file drawers for actual file cabinets and they are built to accomodate pendaflex folders. The other 2 will hold office supplies and "stuff." Upper cabinets are white wall cabinets, 42" high and the 30" wide ones above the center are mullioned glass for display. The flanking 2' wide uppers on each side have solid wood doors. The side closest to the garage will have mail sorting baskets for each person in the family to check on the way in and take with them if they need to. The other side will have all of my cookbooks. There is 2' between the desk top and the upper cabinets and there is a 9" high and 9" deep shelf in the back for small remote speakers for the great room TV and any other small things I want to keep off the desk surface. DS planned all the wiring for the desk area so I know I must have all the proper computer and other connections in the right places but we haven't moved in yet so I can't say how it all actually works. I use a laptop and this space will be just the right size for me. Possibly the dimensions could be tweaked for a desktop---for instance having the base cabinets set out 6" or so from the wall would allow you to have a 30" deep desktop. HTH.

Kraftmaid makes a beautiful piece, called the Office Tower. I've linked to it here. It's also pretty expensive. I really liked it, and so took a picture of it to Lowe's to see about having one put together for less $$$. Unfortunately, it was still more than I wanted to spend.....

So in the end I decided to get this Christopher Lowell Shore Armoire, took down our old desk/counter area, and put the CL piece in like a piece of furniture. A big decision maker for me was I needed to be able to close the doors without putting everything away. The CL piece has a slide-out work surface as well as a slide-out KB tray, which makes that easy. Also a place for a CPU, printer, etc. One consideration- make sure you have ventilation where the CPU piece is (i.e. the back section cut out there).

{{!gwi}}

Here is a link that might be useful: Kraftmaid Office Tower

Kitchen cabinet lines are usually a lot more expensive for the "same" stuff that you can get from a specialty office showroom. The biggest advantage is the continuity of design for flow through the home, and usually, the kitchen cabinets are better quality. But, most people don't want to pay for better quality for a dedicated home office space that will never be seen/judged by others. That's usually reserved for pros who have home offices and have clients meet with them there.

Here are tons of office decorating pictures from the home decorating forum. There are Eye Candy threads there for many rooms.

Here is a link that might be useful: Office Eye Candy

In a different direction... Dell has a computer with flat screen monitor ~5" thick with the cpu built in there, plus a wireless keyboard, wireless mouse, TOUCHSCREEN control, 4G RAM. It was $1250.00 on QVC or one of those shopping network. So you would have no tower to deal with, minimal cables... I don't remember the driver or any other specs. I wish I had seen it several months ago when we decided it wasn't worth the space in our kitchen.

Thanks everyone for the info and links!

Flseadog do you have any pictures of your set up?

Livewireoak, both my husband and I work from home and our space is visible shortly after you walk in our front door. In our old house we had a dedicated room, but here it is part of our family/breakfast/office room so I want it to be attractive. Most of the professional office furniture supply stores either have very heavy stained furniture or very contemporary sleek lined furniture. Neither of those appeal to me as we have kind of a beachy/country/cottage theme going...if that makes sense!

Bestyears that piece you linked is more like what I'm looking for, thanks for the link. I think we may have to go back to our cabinetmaker and have him build us something custom, but I was hoping to find something cheaper. Ideally what I would love to have is something that can close up completely and would have lots of floor to ceiling storage adjacent to the desks. I would love to have it so that when company is over it would look just like a wall of built-ins (remove the chairs to another room when company is here). We have flipper doors hiding our microwave and I'm thinking maybe we could do something similar for the area where the desk is and where the monitor would be. Has anyone done something similar? Maybe it would be cheaper to just add on a small space at the back of the house so it's not so visible? (Just kidding, but I have considered it!)

Want2bsure I will go look up that monitor right now! If I could not have the big cpu tower to deal with that would be wonderful! My husband built both of our computers...wonder if he's up to making something like that! ;)

Janwad and Lukkiirish, thanks for the info and link!

If anyone else has pictures that are similar to what I'm looking for, even in a different style or color that would be wonderful!

Kat :)

Bestyears, I opened the Kraftmaid link after I replied. That is almost exactly what I want, with the doors that close to hide it all, but the bottom of every computer armoire I've ever seen always has a solid base on it, so no place to put your feet! I wonder why they do that, probably for stability, otherwise I'm betting you can't have something with that much weight sitting on just two side supports...darn it!

Flseadog I'm really interested in seeing your set up it sounds like something that could really work and we almost chose Brookhaven white cabinets for our kitchen. Thanks also for the specific measurements on yours.

Kat :)

Kat,
Because the worktop slides out, you don't need a space to put your legs and feet -they are under the slideout.

Bestyears thanks for pointing that out. I have a pull out keyboard tray now and as I sit here typing I have my feet/legs WAY under my desk and I even have the keyboard all the way out. My husband and kids are even worse than I am about it. I think I would have a mutiny on my hands if I got the armoire type computer desk that has the solid base. They would either complain about it constantly (me too probably) or it would get all scuffed up from shoes bumping it. I think those must be for people who just check email and are only briefly at the computer. We are on the computer constantly for work and pleasure so I think I'd want the open space beneath. I'm thinking that we could still do the flipper door idea, but just have two file cabinets for support on either side...much like what Flseadog has described.

I wish I could use the armoire type as they have the look I'm going for. :-(

Kat :)

I guess I'm becoming an expert in home office setups the hard way. I'm a lawyer with a true home office (not just a place to pay bills and do scrapbooking).

Version 1.0: built in one 11' wall of downstairs bedroom, cost $7K (1999 dollars) for maple. Custom built by local cabinet person.

85 year old mom moves in and takes over downstairs bedroom, so office gets moved into spare bedroom upstairs.

Version 2.0: I research all over the internet. I rule out the nice looking armoires because (a) I have too much stuff and (b) you still don't have a place to put your feet even after the worktop slides out; I suspect that all well used armoires end up with lots of scuff marks at foot level on the face of the cabinet. I buy lots of Christopher Lowell Shore (the same line that bestyears bought) and start assembling it. It's all crappy particleboard/OSB/pressboard with a hideous printed finish where you can actually see the pixels of the supposed distressing. It starts falling apart during assembly. Cost: $2200, 2009 dollars.

Version 3.0: I order solid maple, made in California not China, from local furniture company, cost $3400, 2009 dollars, which takes up most of a 10' wall -- not built in. (Design wise, it looks a lot like the Logan office suite available at Pottery Barn.) It's decent quality but probably a grade or two lower than my kitchen cabinets. However, I think that a 10' wall of kitchen cabinets would cost substantially more than $3400 from any reasonable quality cabinet company.

Version 3.1: My mom is now talking with cabinet companies about installing pull out drawers on the lower shelves in the former office so that she'll have drawers in which to store her clothes...grrrr! I really want my home office back -- although I really, really don't want my mom gone.

One important point on drawers: File cabinet drawers look and function very different from kitchen drawers.

Blue

Blue do you have any photos of your various office incarnations? Where did you get the solid maple from, is it a national brand? I do like the look of the Logan Suite from PB but none of their stuff has keyboard trays...grrr! I'm a freelance writer and my husband works for the govt. and telecommutes so we really do need the functions of a true office. That's too bad about the CL stuff, it looks wonderful on the website!

Kat :)

Hi: I don't have any pix. The solid maple is made by Stuart David (www stuarts dot net). It's very modular, like kitchen cabinets, i.e., every piece comes in 3 inch increments (don't like the 62" long desk? try the 65"!) I ordered from the less expensive line, which has less flexibility and fewer colors. The sides of the desk aren't figured as nicely, but in my office it's all up against wall corners, so no reason to spend extra $ on something that no one will see. The desks all have keyboard trays. HTH.

Blue

Thanks Blue! I will go to the website and take a look!

Kat :)