How to Build a Home Office

This guide will show you how to take 300 dollars in materials and 5 hours of time to create a home office for a variety of room sizes.

Please keep in mind you will need to modify your workspace to fit within the space you have. It is our hope that this guide is fun and a strong impetus for you to look at things in a different way than you might normally, and that is through the lens of adaptive reuse and critical misuse. This guide 'misuses' hollow core door slabs, not as doors, but desks, shelves, and structure. The doors are an effective material because they are cheap, lightweight, yet strong.

Adaptive reuse and critical misuse both center around the idea of use and more specifically the idea of use in a way that is other than originally intended. The second key element of these two terms is the word use. For us, use, is just as important a factor in design. Many times people
theorize or speculate without ever doing, producing, or implementing the ideas, and that is fine, but for us beyond the ideais the actual implementation of use.

Through the adapting and reusing of an under used available space at home and by critically misusing hollow core door slabs we were able to generate a great work space with multiple long term benefits. We were able to save $20,000.00 a year, create more time with family, reduced our commute to almost nothing, and this was all done for less than $300.00 and completed
in less than 5 hours.

We hope you enjoy.

From the offices of Metropolitan Architecture Practice
http://www.mapractice.com
http://www.criticalmisuse.com

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Step 1: Anatomy of a Hollow Core Door Slab

Knowing how hollow cores are constructed is important to completing this project.
Hollow core doors are constructed with a wood frame on its edges and a cardboard honeycomb
filling the inside. This is then covered up with thin sheet of veneer on the front and back.

It is important to remember when cutting through a door, the cardboard core will be exposed.

The side that shows the inside of the door should always be hidden or facing a wall so this side is never seen when the office is completed.

chadcad says: Feb 27, 2012. 9:24 PM

Very nice and detailed 'ible. Nice to see CAD work on one every now and again. Great idea, has me thinking of other ways to critically misuse other items.

gwrober says: Feb 23, 2012. 8:04 AM

Wow, very late to this one - but nice 'ible!! Might modify this for an extra room we have...will post here if we do!

lemonie says: Sep 17, 2009. 1:53 PM

Very good, I see a Dell and a what? L

CriticalMisuse (author) in reply to lemonieSep 17, 2009. 3:02 PM

We actually have 3 Dells in the office.

lemonie in reply to CriticalMisuseSep 17, 2009. 3:09 PM

They're all Dell? I have them at work, I've seen people accidentally block the intakes with paper and they go "vroooooooom" - "why is it doing that?".... Not a Dell specific problem, but my question was just general interest. L

stephenniall in reply to lemonieApr 19, 2010. 10:03 AM

Fan working harder because of constricted air maybe?

I tend to stay away from dells , they seem to overheat and break alot

lemonie in reply to stephenniallApr 19, 2010. 10:34 AM

Yes it's the fan going flat-out because some fool blocked the intake.

L

CriticalMisuse (author) in reply to stephenniallApr 19, 2010. 10:20 AM

We have never had a problem with the dells overheating or breaking. Some of our computers are almost 5 years old now and we've had no problems.

stephenniall in reply to CriticalMisuseApr 19, 2010. 11:10 AM

I've never had problems with dell Computers for overheating but The dells at my school Are always broken .

Dell laptops are the culprit for overheating . My one gets hot quickly

darkclaw42 in reply to stephenniallAug 26, 2010. 3:37 PM

Dell fans are usually a little 'cheaper', resulting in more noise and stuff like that. For some reason they run ALOT faster then normal fans on the same 12v, but they also sound like jet engines when they do that. There was a dell line of laptops that had a major heating fault in the whole build. There was no way to fix it, unless you took it out the darned case. Cant remember what line of products it was.. I have a bunch of them in the attic, get them for free all the time there that bad.

kathynv says: Oct 1, 2009. 6:07 PM

What beautiful office space and an amazingly detailed and clear instructable! I am at the beginning stages of converting an extra bedroom into an office for the SO and me. Your plan is by far the least expensive and one of the most attractive end results, which now makes this instructable the clear winner over any other plans we've seen. If you are willing to have some painted surfaces in your office, you could save quite a bit of money by using some doors that are labeled "paint grade." These are made from several sheets of veneer, joined with finger laps. They look terrible in their pre-painted state, but once painted, they're as attractive as any other painted door. Thanks again.

118

mikeasaurus says: Sep 17, 2009. 1:12 PM

any structural issues regarding using hollow core doors, do the desks bow under weight?

CriticalMisuse (author) in reply to mikeasaurusSep 17, 2009. 1:22 PM

We have been using the office for about 6 months and we have had no bowing. If supported as described the door slabs should hold up quite well. Currently we have a couple computers, lots of large books and various office supplies. Even when pushing down on the desks with force, there is minimal to no bowing.