With four kids at home, five years and younger, Heather set up her home office in the corner of her large dining room. She felt that it was “necessary to be near all the action.” Anyone with small children can relate.

Her 6 1/2′ x 2′ desk is made from a base she rescued from her kitchen. On the base is an antique door with a piece of glass on top to give her a smooth work surface. She cut out the drawers in the base to make room for her CPU and printer.

Above her desk is a hutch made out of 1’ x 8’ boards, with cubbies that hold her office supplies and products. She painted the hutch in a distressed gray after her facebook friends helped her decide which color to use. Next to her desk is a dresser to store more supplies.

In addition to using a black lunchbox to hide ugly cords — she cut a hole in each side— she uses a jar to hold business cards and has binders decorated with brown paper bags and antique lace.

As someone who loves to share her handmade creations and ideas, this home office reflects her personality, her creative talent and her ability to save money.  The only cost for the entire project was the boards for her hutch.

I describe my home office as a place where I enjoy working every day (except for those days when it’s too nice to work inside) and a space that fits my working style. There are a few things to think about whether you’re setting up a new home office or thinking about fine-tuning your current office.

• Decide if your home office would be better off in another room. When you first started working from home, may have set up your home office in an obvious place: a spare bedroom, guest room or basement. There may be a better place. If you rarely use your dining room or formal living room, consider setting up shop in one of those rooms.

• Go for function, but don’t forget about style. The right window treatments, flooring and art you display can change the look and feel of your home office. Don’t forget about personal touches including family photographs, gifts from friends or family, or a souvenir from your last trip.

• Replace your beat-up metal file cabinet with a sleek, steel file cabinet. Use the space on top of the cabinet to store your all-in-one equipment, desktop files or reference books.

• Say goodbye to your backbreaking, pain-inducing, kitchen chair and replace it with an ergonomically correct office chair in a patterned or colored fabric.

• Keep your home office functional with the right furniture. An old dining room table works fine for conference meetings and assembling marketing kits, but for day-to-day operations, you’re better off with an ergonomically correct desk or computer workstation.

No matter how you define your home office, the goal is to create a space that’s your own, and one you’ll use often.

Interior Designer Melinda Miles and her husband inherited a pharmacy supply cabinet that had been in their family for years. The quarter-sawn oak cabinet started out in an old, turn-of-the-century drugstore and held pharmacy supplies.  Miles realized that these drawers, with the labels for the pharmaceutical products still attached, were the perfect size for DVD and supply storage within her home office.

Her interior design skills came in handy when she created plans for a hutch unit that could rest on top to house the TV, books and some accessories. Her cabinet guy built the hutch exactly to the specifications to line up with the base, and her furniture refinisher matched the old finish perfectly. Matching a finish is not an easy task.

Now they have a fully functional entertainment center/supply cabinet that preserves a piece of her husband’s history. Her husband didn’t want to remove the old pharmacy labels, but the one that read “Feminine Products” disappeared mysteriously during the redesign process.

Some parts of history don’t need to be preserved.