For work-from-home, I can't emphasize enough how much of a game changer it is to have a physically separate building for your work, especially if you have a family with kids and noise and pets and things. Working from a spare bedroom, even one without a bed / outfitted as an office, is just not my thing. Even if your family "knows the rules" and let you work in peace. It subjectively still "feels like you're home". With a separate building, I can do a short walking commute and take those 10 seconds to "get into work mindset." And, once I'm out there, it can be a hermetically sealed, zero-distraction zone.
If you are lucky and fortunate enough to live in an actual house with land, and work (or are thinking about working) remotely, seriously consider investing in an actual separate building for your office.
Yeah, second that. I made my office separated from the main house and it's incredible.
We bought an old house and did a full remodel and planned for an office and a work kitchen (my wife is a chef) separated from the main house (and each other).
Im jealous of the Tuff Shed or prebuilt being an option. Where I live we have incredibly high snow loads, so any structure ends up needing to be custom built to meet our requirements (even out buildings). I've found plenty of pre-fab units that claim to handle "high snow loads" that will not meet code where I am.
I'm still planning on building out an office/studio, but it will be a much larger investment despite being able to DIY much of it.
well it just has to stop significant buildup over multiple days right? IDK, seems pretty effective here in tahoe where ive seen it applied on parts of peoples houses
Nice, I also have an office in my backyard. Although its a ~100 year old brick structure that was originally staff quarters. Had to put a new roof on it, run power, fibre and install AC. Now its my office / data centre (yes I put a rack in a room I sit in...)
I always think about it, but then I remember I couldn't sleep knowing my tech stuff is inside a shed in the backyard. Too easy to break in and steal it.
I don't know what kind of tech stuff you have, but since you can run ethernet (or better, fiber) to the shed, you could keep most of it locked in the house and just walk out with your laptop to your workspace each day.
Monitors are relatively cheap these days, you can get a name brand 32" 4K monitor for around $300 - if someone busts in and steals it, the door/window repair will probably cost more than the monitor.
I ran PVC between my house and shop/office with 2 sets of single-mode fiber instead of ethernet. Electrical code will require proper grounding for copper for lightning strikes.
Do you have an idea of the R-value of the insulation you put in? I'm wondering what this will take to heat and cool during the peaks of summer and winter.
$20K still seems like a lot to get some mosquito bites walking through the yard to work. Lack of plumbing, coffee, etc (some of those are fixable of course) is a bit of a turnoff but perhaps the walk is part of the charm.
I find that with kids mostly in school and knowing the rules the exterior space isn’t a requirement, but I don’t have a ton of meetings these days so YMMV. Mostly this is cope because I don’t have 20K to drop on a cool office! :)
If you're relatively handy, a lot of what OP paid for can be DIY'ed. I would have never paid a contractor to do all of that. Probably just the electrical. Especially the Tuff Shed structure. Those things are dead simple, marketed at DIYers, and can be finished in a weekend. Insulation, drywall, trim, and flooring is also child's play. OP could have easily cut the project's cost in half if he wanted to.
The Coffee issue is easy to solve, just bring a pitcher of water with you in the morning to pour into the coffee maker - it's what I did when my home office was in a spare room above the garage. The walk from his back yard to the indoor bathroom is probably shorter than the walk he'd have in any office.
A lot of that cost is labour. Look at all the spots it says "contracted" in the breakdown. If you can do a lot of the work yourself, then you can save a lot of $$$, but it's a tradeoff of course. (They also could have saved quite a bit by just having a window unit AC, but that's up to them.)
If you are lucky and fortunate enough to live in an actual house with land, and work (or are thinking about working) remotely, seriously consider investing in an actual separate building for your office.
We bought an old house and did a full remodel and planned for an office and a work kitchen (my wife is a chef) separated from the main house (and each other).
It's been a game changer
I'm still planning on building out an office/studio, but it will be a much larger investment despite being able to DIY much of it.
https://tuhat.net/@sbr/p/big-tech-sucks
The rack warms it in the winter so I don't need any extra cooling, and I run the AC in the summer.
Monitors are relatively cheap these days, you can get a name brand 32" 4K monitor for around $300 - if someone busts in and steals it, the door/window repair will probably cost more than the monitor.
$20K still seems like a lot to get some mosquito bites walking through the yard to work. Lack of plumbing, coffee, etc (some of those are fixable of course) is a bit of a turnoff but perhaps the walk is part of the charm.
I find that with kids mostly in school and knowing the rules the exterior space isn’t a requirement, but I don’t have a ton of meetings these days so YMMV. Mostly this is cope because I don’t have 20K to drop on a cool office! :)
Nice work and thanks for the post!