Everybody Staze...

I recently upgraded my office desk from an old O’Sullivan Diplomat corner desk (sorry about the really tiny picture… there aren’t any hi-res images to be found) to this more “grown up” looking executive desk. The O’Sullivan I purchased at Staples back in 2003 for $99. The corner desk was great in my old apartment that had a rather large office (20’x12′). But in my new office, that Tara and I share, it was just a bit large, especially with Tara’s easel, her desk, a large bookcase, etc.

The new desk is a Sauder Heritage Hill Executive Desk that Tara and I found at Office Depot a while back, and finally ended up purchasing a couple weeks ago since it was on sale for $239 (normally $299+). The only odd thing is that you can’t pick it up yourself (maybe so their employees aren’t having to heft around 150lb boxes?), so it had to be delivered (which we got for free, as it was a special… but make sure to check if you can get free delivery). Turns out the freight company only does our area on Fridays, and they didn’t call to schedule a delivery until late Thursday afternoon, when the truck had already been loaded, so we had to wait another week before it was delivered (which, was actually a good thing, since we got a chance to quickly scrape the ceiling (remove the popcorn), retexture it, paint, replace the carpet, and molding, and all and all, make the office look like the rest of the house (it was the only room we hadn’t done the ceiling, or painted yet).

So, desk arrives (all 150lbs, in a rather small box considering the size of the desk), and they put the box in the office. After making what we thought was enough room to assemble it, we were grossly mistaken. When you put one of these together, have a good 10’x10, area to work. Also, you might want to open the box from the bottom. The first piece you need is pretty much on the bottom. But, anyway, take everything out, and make sure you keep track of what ended up where.

You’ll notice, which neither the Office Depot display model, nor the one on the Sauder webpage has, is the top does have a cable passthrough hole, and the top middle drawer is a keyboard tray. Those were my biggest complaints when we bought it, and apparently I wasn’t the only one, since Sauder has fixed those issues since the display model was installed at Office Depot. The other issue, the color of the hardware, was also fixed by them including Bronze and Brass hardware. We used the Bronze.

Total assembly time was about an hour and a half. Even though they say not to use a drill for screws, I used my trusty Bosch PS-20, and it made very quick work of some of the tedious work (like, screwing the end/trim onto the top). Just make sure to set the torque on the driver pretty low. You want snug. Much tighter than that, and you risk stripping out the particle board.

All and all, it went together without a hitch. It looks very nice for flat-pack furniture, and it really makes the office look nice. And it still offers plenty of desk space, while not being as huge as the L-desk. And the top is melamine and should hold up to more of a beating than normal laminated particle board. But, the jury is out on that one. If I have any issues with it, I’ll be sure to post back on this with an update.

[xrr rating=4.5/5]While I prefer real wood, one would have cost easily twice as much, and may have been an issue getting into the office (only a 29.5″ door).

Link to Office Depot page: here.
Link to page on Sauder website: here.