This thread appears to be pretty old, but I just stumbled on it today, and it caught my attention, because I had just been chatting with someone recently about my desk. So I guess I'll add to it.
The desk I use now is made out of an interior flush door, you know, the hollow core kind. I found some good-looking simulated leather vinyl upholstery, and wrapped the desktop in it by gluing it down with Elmer's glue. The white can you can find in a squeeze jar at the craft store. One end sits on a two drawer file cabinet, while the other end sits on a shelf in a bookcase.
The door gives me a lot of workspace, being 30" x 80". I've used this design since 1982 when I bought my first PC, and been very happy with it. I usually set up with the bookcase on the right, so I can reach all my reference material, and the file cabinet on the left. So I can reach over it to the printer stand, the three printer shelf kind. Inkjet, laser with plain paper, and laser with three hole paper.
However, my first home office was built with loving care from an old upright piano, no one wanted to restore. It had broken keys broken strings, and a bunch of stuff. I did have to pay $25 for it.
Pic 1 - this shows where I am, after I have removed the keyboard and the front of the sound box, and where I discover it is going to be a little work involved, and why pianos are those are so dad blame heavy (that several hundred pounds of cast iron making up the Golden harp in the back.
Pic 2 - Well, the harp is gone, and I've moved the project inside. I couldn't get the pins out of the soundboard. Those things are screwed in tight.
Pic 3 - This is what remains of the harp, and some other stuff from the guts of the piano. That thing at the bottom, with the black hose coming out is an old upright manual gas pump. The kind where you use a hand pump to fill a glass tank at the top of the pump and let gravity do its job to fill your tank. If anyone knows where I can find another one, I'm in the market. I wasn't able to finish turning the other one into the lamp I wanted.
Pic 4 - My home office, circa 1978. Before the days of PCs, before the days of the Internet, and back when I was footloose and fancy free. Wonder when that will ever happen again? Oh well.
I don't know what use posting this on the Internet will have, maybe some of you can tell me. When you get as old as Methuselah, like me, you just start posting stuff that burns up time.
Kirk