Once Redesign sent the pricing information to the contractor and furniture dealer we had a couple days of waiting ahead of us.  During the original site-walk with Ustream we discussed the option of building a custom reception desk with backlight opaque glass and a pin-mounted sign.  During the space-planning phase I had the contractor provide a rough order of magnitude for the cost to have the millworker fabricate this custom piece.  This gave Ustream a preliminary price to decide if they wanted to go ahead with a custom desk or settle with a pre-fabricated option.  After comparing the costs Ustream decided to eliminate the custom option and move forward with a pre-fabricated desk.

From all of my experience in commercial design I knew this desk could take the entry of the office/reception to another level.  There is nothing better than seeing a beautiful custom built veneered desk when entering an office; especially one that has a lighting element built into the design.  After all, this is the first impression most guests will have of your company so why not spend the money to make it a good one.

After looking over the millworkers pricing I saw a couple areas we could value engineer to cut the cost.  I spoke with Ustream and they decided to take another look at the custom desk option.  At this point, verbally telling the millworker how to make the desk was not going to cut it so I produced the required millwork details and elevations for accurate pricing (see drawings below for reference).

I instructed the contractor to bid this out to multiple millworkers so we could make sure we were getting the best pricing.  In this tough economy there is always a chance of getting a killer deal on custom furniture.  Once all of the furniture pricing came back we compared the pricing of the two options and Usteam opted to move forward with the pre-fabricated desk.

 

Custom Millwork Reception Desk

custom reception desk1

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