AT reader Josh Smith sent us his admirable DIY solution for a space saving home office:
After seeing some cool office displays on apartment therapy I thought you might enjoy looking at my (almost) zero footprint wall mounted office. My goal was to have a useful workspace in a small 1 bedroom apartment but be able to make it disappear when company comes over for fun or food. Total cost for the monitor, mount and mouse/kb was under $200 and it sure beats typing hunched over on a laptop...

Even though I love using my HP Mini 1000 to blog on the go and my Tablet works out well at home, I’ve longed for a nice widescreen monitor and full size keyboard. Since we live in a small one bedroom apartment, adding a desk to our dining room/library/reading room was out of the question and so was setting up shop in full force on the dining room table.

Rather than purchase an Anthro eNook or an Ikea knock off I decided to turn our kitchen table into an office that had a zero footprint when we wanted to have people over for dinner and thus the “Wall Mounted Office” was born.

I purchased a wall mount from Telehook Articulating Mount for $45 from ProVantage (which ships extremely fast) a 19 inch widescreen Acer monitor and a Microsoft keyboard and mouse for a total cost of under $200 excluding the laptop I already had. - Josh Smith

Job well done and a great inspiration for maximizing surface area as an additional workspace. We might have to look into this for our own small home office where desk space is sparse and at a premium.