It would be interesting to see any changes made after a year or so once everyone has settled in a bit.
The chalkboards would be a significant hindrance to my productivity. I much prefer a whiteboard for this reason.
I don't object to the sound or dust so much as how much of a pain in the bum they are to write on. Whiteboard lets you write pretty accurately when you want to, whereas chalkboards and sticks of chalk seem to reduce anything other than large sweeps to painful scratchings.
They look very trendy / counter-corporate, but I'd hate having to use the things.
I think the worst thing you can do to an employee is start merging the idea of "home" with the idea of "work". It implies sleeping at your desk and never really "leaving". At least, that's how I'd see it, if I still had a FT job.
Full disclosure: I work from home. It's confusing and I'm hoping to get a separate office soon.
I'm 100% with you on that one. Working from home, particularly with the same equipment and environment for both fun stuff and professional stuff, is really weird and I find it can dilute my sense of when I'm wearing my professional hat and when I'm on my own time. The result is that both can get disrupted by the other more often than I would prefer. I sometimes get to the end of what feels like a long working day, and find that I have only logged a few hours that are billable to a client. Several other things happened during the day, and while I hadn't registered how much time they were using up before, the time sheet does not lie.
We've actually been setting up a new home office just these past few days, because not having a separate space finally got too weird now both of us are working from home. Just walking into the room, where everything is perfectly tidy and the shelves contain business stationery and the books are technical ones and the hardware is serious business stuff, changes my perspective and makes me want to concentrate on getting useful stuff done Right Now. I still wear suits to meetings with clients for much the same reason, even though I know they wouldn't care if I was just in jeans and a T-shirt: it's my professional face, and it brings with it my professional mindset.
I once read about a guy who had an office in his back room. Every morning he would get up, dress in his work clothes, walk out the front door, walk around the side of his house to the back door, and let himself into his office, even though he could have just walked through the home. I wouldn't go that far myself, but I totally understand why he did it.
37S is also a smaller company, so I would say that people there regard the whole office as their 'home' or house, not just their workspace. It's designed in a away that you can use the office like your home. You have separated rooms for different tasks and people working there are more like a family sharing a house not like a group of people sharing a space and having their own small private place. Like a family, you don't decorate your common areas (hopefully) by what whatever anybody wants, but more having some style, while allowing personal items in some places.
In contrast, Zappos' office seems to say, "You're already home."
[edit] It's also worth pointing out that these companies are employing very different people. Zappos has a huge focus on customer service, and their "people friendly" office reflects that. The engineers and designers at 37signals, however, very well may appreciate the minimalism and simplicity of their environment.