Top 9 Tips You Should Know When Shopping for Wood Home Office Furniture
By David Myers
If you are serious about working out of a home office, you will probably not be too successful doing your work from a kitchen table or in the corner of the living room. You need a dedicated area to actually work and most people will get a unused bedroom or even partition off part of the garage. But you will need more than just a room. You are going to need furniture as well.
When starting out with our home office, we usually buy the standard pressed wood desks or even take an old table and chair for a desk. After a while though, you might want to go for the quality of real wood office furniture. But even wood furniture varies in quality and there are some tips you need to know when buying this type of office furniture.
Tip 1: Quality wood home office furniture should feel solid and heavy.
First thing you should realize is that quality wood furniture should feel solid and heavy. Good wood will be solid. You will be able to feel the solidness. And along with the solidness goes the weight. Just like shutting the car door of a luxury automobile. It has a different feel and a different sound than an inexpensive economy car.
Tip 2: The drawers in wood home office desks and filing cabinets should slide smoothly.
You will be able to tell quality craftsmanship if the drawers slide in and out smoothly without binding. Another thing to look at when it comes to drawers is how easily you can remove them and put them back on their guides. Many times they are easy to remove but very difficult to place back on the glides. If they seem to bind then there could be problems later on with the facing coming off.
Tip 3: Consider wood veneer over the solid wood core.
When you start shopping for wood furniture, you might want to go for the pure solid wood kind. But there are also types of furniture that have a solid wood core with wood veneer on the surface. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. For example, with solid wood home office furniture, if it gets scratched and water-stained throughout the years, it is very easy to strip, sand, and refinish. It is very hard to do the same with wood veneer.
With wood furniture covered with wood veneer, you actually get a stronger product. Many people mistakenly think that wood furniture with veneer is inferior but this is not actually the case. The veneer is attached to the surface of solid wood core with adhesive used in marine and aircraft so it is very strong and waterproof as well. Plus the veneer is made of the finest wood grain material and can be very elegant.
Tip 4: Consider the substrate of the wood home office furniture.
The substrate is the material of the core of the desk. In other words, it’s the material under the veneer. In wood furniture, the substrate could be made of plywood. Plywood is nothing but glued thin sheets of wood. Just take the time to make sure the substrate is of good quality and find out exactly what type of wood it is.
Tip 5: You still have to consider the utility.
Even though we are looking for the finest in wood home office furniture in terms of appearance and durability, we must still keep in mind the utility of it. Filing cabinets should have metal locks. If you need a wood home office desk that will be used with a computer, make sure that the computer can be mounted inside the desk. If you still have to set your computer on the floor then you are not getting the utility you need to out of your wood home office furniture.
Tip 6: Check for height and leveling adjustments on the furniture.
The leveling adjustment is especially important. Some wood furniture will have a tendency to warp if the floor is not level for example. So the legs should have some sort of hardware to allow the achieving a level state for the piece of furniture. Believe it or not but if the floor is not level (which is common in older houses and buildings), the frame of the furniture item will attempt to level itself by warping and you could end up with sticking desk drawers. Plus when greeting a client they will see a 'shabby' appearance. Think of how the light looks when it reflects of a nice desk top.
Tip 7: If this is wood home office furniture for computers, make sure you can hide the wires.
Wood is great for allowing the ability to create routing guides and access holes to be able to hide the computer cables and power supply in. So unless you want those unsightly cables in view, make sure your wood home office furniture has those.
Tip 8: Don’t judge the quality of the furniture by the drawer joints.
It used to be that the dovetailed or doweled joints used to assemble drawers were an indication of high quality. They still are an indication of high quality and are much better than staples or nails to hold the angles together. But don’t use that standard alone to judge the quality. Nowadays there are highly-advanced adhesives and pneumatically-drilled staples that provide the same quality of bonding but cost less to manufacture.
Tip 9: Evaluate your local climate and environmental controls.
When wood is cut and dried, there is still a trace of water in it. Take a look at the climate in the area you live in. If you live in a dry climate, the wood will have a tendency to dry out and shrink. There’s no way to really tell the water content of the wood but be prepared to stabilize the effects of climate on the wood. Dryer climates can use evaporative coolers to keep the wood at home and in moist climates, refrigerated air and dehumidifiers can be used to keep the wood from absorbing too much moisture and swelling.
Your wood home office furniture will last you for many years if you shop for furniture of high quality.
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