Desks

Office desks and the ones built for a spare room:

are built to different standards. An executive desk is a straight top over a steel frame with a pedestal of two or three drawers, one of them locking. A workstation is the open-plan version, two or three positions joined by panels and a shared cable tray, and it leaves an office as a set. At home most desks are flat-pack melamine, a straight computer desk or an L-shaped unit for a corner. Gaming desks add a textured top and cable channels; the elevable puts an electric frame underneath so you can work standing. A dining table doing duty as a desk is listed under dining tables, a stand for the printer under side tables and the chair under office chairs.

A fixed-height desk or an elevable:

comes down to who sits at it and for how long. A fixed desk stands about 75 cm high. An elevable earns its price when two people of different heights share one desk, or when someone wants to stand for part of a long day. Look for a motor in each leg: a dual-motor frame lifts an L-shaped top or two monitors evenly, where a single motor driving both legs strains under load. The frame also decides how a desk survives a move: melamine side panels start to rack once taken apart and rebuilt, while steel stays square.

Where the money goes on an electric desk:

a flat-pack melamine computer desk starts under ₡50,000 new, and at that price a used one saves little once you have paid a flete to fetch it. Elevables are where second-hand pays. New ones start around ₡140,000, and an L-shaped electric frame passes ₡250,000; nearly all of that is frame, motors and control box, and the top is ordinary particleboard. A used elevable is worth what its motors are worth. One that runs cleanly through its full range is a sound buy well under the new price, and one with a dead motor is a frame and a top.

The motors on a used elevable, run end to end:

tell you more than the photos. Run it from lowest to highest and back with some weight on top. Both legs should move together without knocking, and the top should finish level. An error code on the handset, or a desk that stops partway, sometimes clears with the reset routine in the manual; if it keeps coming back, the control box or a motor is on its way out. Make sure the power supply and the handset come with it, because those parts are specific to the frame. On an executive desk, pull every drawer to its stop and ask for the key to the locking one. Ex-office furniture often still carries a company asset-tag sticker. That is normal; ask which office it came from. A workstation is only as complete as its hardware: count the panels, brackets and connectors before you pay, because one missing bracket and a three-person workstation will not stand. On melamine, a swollen bottom edge means the desk stood in water, and it will not shrink back.

A desk listing with its height range and a landmark:

give width, depth and height, and for an elevable the lowest and highest settings and whether it has one motor or two. A video of it going up and down answers the first message you will get. Say whether it travels assembled: an executive desk with its gavetero off usually fits in a pickup, an assembled L-shaped desk does not. Give the location the way people here give directions, from the church or the nearest landmark, so a buyer in Grecia can judge the trip. A company clearing a floor in Santa Ana has its desks by the dozen; list them as a lot with the number of workstations and one station photographed fully set up, because someone furnishing a small office wants to see a whole station, not a stack of panels.