It doesn’t have to look pretty to do the job, but still we are inundated by books and magazine articles that promote form over function. I’m referring specifically to the home office.

Born of the belief that just about everyone would be telecommuting to work, the home office captured the imagination of homebuilders and designers everywhere during the dot.com craze a few years back.

A series of books appeared, each filled with pages and pages of home offices that looked as if they’d all been designed by I.M. Pei.

There were floor to ceiling windows and skylights, space-age furniture and wiring systems that were capable of connecting you with satellites. They weren’t cheap, either. And I believe that you should never build anything that costs you more than you can ever earn back through use.

I remember visiting a version of the New American Home at the International Builders Show in Dallas back in the late 1990s that featured his and her home offices.

The “his” office was what you might build for a high-powered executive, with dark oak paneling and furniture, and located near the front entrance so that visiting dignitaries didn’t have to tramp through the house to get there.

The “her” office was toward the back of the house. The centerpiece was a loom, and the decor was very fru-fru, forgetting, I suppose, that there are high-powered women executives, too.

They sure were pretty. But were they functional?

If my home office were full of oak furniture and floor-to-ceiling windows, I’d spend all of my time trying to protect the finish when I wasn’t staring out the windows daydreaming.

In the intervening years, we decided that maybe working at home was not something we wanted to do all the time, unless we lived so far from headquarters that showing up at work every day would mean buying our own helicopter.

We crave human companionship and water-cooler conversation — two things I couldn’t get if I spent my life at home.

Now, do we need space to work at home? Of course, we do. But unless we are operating a business from home — and there are municipal zoning rules and building codes with which to comply and federal accessibility requirements to meet if customers come to call — all we really need is usable space.

What kind of work do we do at home? Typically, most of us bring work home from the office so we don’t have to stay at the office more than eight hours a day or on weekends.

We need a desk or table, lighting, a couple of electrical outlets, separate lines for computer modem and a telephone, some storage (there’s never enough anyway) and a way to organize things — a couple of wire baskets and a filing cabinet.

The question, then, is where? If we bring work home so that we can be near the family, the office should be close to where the family is. If we need peace and quiet, it should be far from where the rest of the family congregates.

In the first instance, we are talking about part of the kitchen, for example. In the second instance, it can be one wall of your bedroom or a guest room.

If you have a heated garage or a dry basement, all the better.

Mine is in a corner of the basement, positioned near the bottom of the stairs to the kitchen for easy access to the coffeepot. Instead of pretty, make the space comfortable. I bought an ergonomic chair for $44 in which I can sit for an hour or more at a time – unless I need a coffee refill.

I work on an old kitchen table with a new top. I had filing cabinets and a couple of spare bookcases already.

I tapped off the telephone line in the basement for an extension, and I share one of our two dedicated computer lines for my laptop.

I moved an existing outlet closer to the table. Into that outlet I plugged in a surge protector.

For entertainment, I have a small radio, a TV (no cable) and old VCR that doesn’t rewind but plays fine. Let’s not forget the old couch that does double duty as space for organizing files and papers.

Can I work there? You bet. I wrote this column in it, and my first book, too.

Is it pretty? No. But it’s functional, and other than the chair, it cost me under $40 for telephone cable, a surge protector and to move the outlet a couple of feet. It isn’t going to make the cover of any designer magazines. But it is comfortable, functional and really close to the coffee.

And it works for me.

Published: August 12, 2004

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Al Heavens writes about real estate and home repair and improvement. He is the author of What No One Ever Tells You About Renovating Your Home: Real-Life Advice For Hassle-free, Cost-Effective Remodeling.