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Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown

Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown

surprisetalk

Comments (142)

  • kslambert
    Author here. Thanks for the comments everyone!There are many comments on the price point. I would like to comment on one thing."$20k is too much"I agree $20k is an investment. Could I have done it for cheaper? Absolutely. Would a DIY shell been cheaper? Would doing more of the work myself have been cheaper? Could I have saved by putting in the smaller stock windows and not having a skylight? Of course!But I am a dad with a young kid, he was 1 when I built the office. I didn't want to spend my limited free time on this project. There was a trade-off between paying for labor and the time it would take to do it myself. At this point in my life I always look at these decisions through a lens of: is the cost savings worth my time. In this case I valued my time more than the cost savings. I was lucky enough to be in a situation where I would rather spend money for someone else to build this then spending my nights and weekends on this project.I am almost 4 years in I would have paid over $20k for a co-working space. We were able to stay in our smaller house with a ridiculously low mortgage rate. We made the right choice for us.Cheap is relative. Sometimes your time is worth more. There are litteraly entire companies built on this premise, cough DoorDash
  • ryandrake
    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.
  • mtlynch
    I jumped to the end and saw $2.3k for the mini split and couldn't believe it. I've installed mini splits on two homes and the quotes were always in the $15-25k range for 3-5 head units, so $2.3k for a head + outdoor condenser unit sounded implausible, but then I saw he found a surprisingly good deal:> I got a ton of quotes for installing a mini split. They ranged from $4-$7k, which was higher than I expected after researching the cost of a quality small unit and knowing this would be a tiny job for an HVAC contractor, especially because I had my electrician prewire the electrical. I was considering installing a DIY system (Mr. Cool DIY system with pre-charged AC lines), But found an HVAC contractor who would install a system for a much lower price than the other quotes I received (and he had great reviews on Thumbtack). In the end, I got a Daikin Mini-split, a common system with many replacement parts. The installation took about 5 hours, and my tech did a great job. I am glad I researched and got a lot of quotes for this one.
  • rootsudo
    Boy things are different in Portland where you pay people to insult sheds…But 8x10 for $20,000 just goes to show how expensive USA is for construction. There’s a point where I would review coworking space cost (not as convenient, I know) to just living and owning property abroad.
  • titanomachy
    Thanks for taking the time to make this detailed write-up! You got a beautiful result, and I appreciate the spirit of sharing what you learned and helping people who are considering similar projects.I'm glad you measured CO2. I've recently noticed I tend to get headaches when working or sleeping in small poorly-ventilated spaces, and I'm surprised how often I encounter new structures without ventilation. I guess tightly-sealed buildings are still a relatively new idea.In the PNW you could probably be comfortable >90% of days with a cracked window, fan, adjustable shades, and a little electric radiator, but if I was doing this project I'd probably opt for the modern heat pump / ERV combo as well.
  • starkparker
    > In Portland, I didn’t need a permit for the building because it was under the size thresholdYou still need a structural building permit, beyond any electrical or plumbing permits, if it's both heated and used either as a living space or "for a business".The city added the "for a business" wrinkle in 2024 and is very squirrely about whether using it as a work-from-home office counts as "for a business". It _does_ include working from it without bringing employees or clients into the buildling, but the way it's written implies that it's for people running a business out of their home address and not working for someone else's business.It's a gray-enough area that I hope you got some solid legal advice. We ended up getting the permit to cover our bases in case I had to move to freelance/consulting self-employment.
  • eysquared
    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.
  • learn_more
  • ipython
    Looks awesome, but I would have run single-mode fiber between the house and the office. Eliminates any issues with lightning strikes taking out equipment or other electrical gremlins, not to mention providing opportunity for expanding bandwidth in the future by just swapping out the SFP modules on each end. Pre-terminated fiber from fs.com is inexpensive and easy to work with - just measure and install.
  • javier123454321
    Author, if you're here, there's a typo. > I was planning on insulting the office myselfWhat did it do to you that you needed to insult it?
  • skullone
    Did similar, but went 12x16, trenched power and cat6, did rockwool insulation, did pine tongue and groove paneling and an Alaskan white cedar porch. When we sold the house, I'm pretty sure the shed is what sealed the deal, people had all sorts of things they wanted it to be, even as a spare bedroom
  • 8by3
    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...)https://tuhat.net/@sbr/p/big-tech-sucksThe rack warms it in the winter so I don't need any extra cooling, and I run the AC in the summer.
  • vondur
    We did this for my wife right before the Pandemic. Luckily we already had a 12 foot by 12 foot cement pad in our backyard. The building itself was 10 feet by 12 feet and cost $5000. Then we had to install insulation and drywall which was another $1500. Then I had a single 20 Amp power line installed and that cost another $1000, but I also had him do some other work and I assisted with the digging of the trench. I think we were at around $9000 all in with it. I checked with the company and that model of building we got is around $8000 now, so maybe around 60% more now?
  • dearilos
    Building a home office in your backyard is really hard. It's a good idea (though expensive) to go with a pre-built if you don't wanna figure all the details out. If you DIY the design and build, you have to figure out:- What type of floor? (2x4? 2x6? will it hold me and my chair without collapsing?)- What roof type? How big should the overhang be? What's easier to build yourself vs looks nicer but a real pain to build?- How many windows should be in my office?- How do I build something within my budget?- What size of shed should I go with for my purpose? (workshop? office?)I'm working on https://myhomecat.com - which lets you do all of this. If you enter your address and the kind of shed you want (i.e. 10x12 office), you should be able to get something fully code-compliant that figures out all of your details. It's still early so it doesn't cover every edge case, but the idea is there and it works really well from the feedback I've gotten.
  • ryan_glass
    It seems very expensive. I built a 5m x 3m 'log cabin' garden office (in Scotland in 2018), with electricity and cat6 cabled internet for £5k (approx $6800). The shed itself was a kit-build so easy and for foundations I used stakes (concreted in).
  • gehwartzen
    For those wanting more inspiration for similar builds, this reddit community is pretty good: https://www.reddit.com/r/shedditors/
  • js2
    > I wrote up my experience building a backyard office because I wish I had come across more articles like this when planning my build. I hope this post helps you on your journey.I don't recall how technical it is[^1] because I read it years ago, but Michael Pollan wrote an entire book about building himself a writing room:https://michaelpollan.com/books/a-place-of-my-own/[^1]: Being familiar with Pollan's writing, it's likely at least as much philosophical and meditative as technical and practical.
  • Rendello
    The 8-Bit Guy also built a backyard office and documented it in a series of videos:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFP-fU0FsF0
  • trumbitta2
    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.
  • someothherguyy
    that is insanely expensive for what this is, but i suppose that depends on what you are willing to do yourself
  • biotinker
    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.
  • Jeremy1026
    I have one problem that keeps me from doing something like this. Weather. I don't want to get wet walking out or back because it happens to be raining.
  • gfat
    I've wanted to build one of these for a while just to have that "going into the office" feel even with WFH; appreciate the detail and breakdown. Also, lovely styled personal site.
  • krn1p4n1c
    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.
  • alehlopeh
    Insulating -> insulting is a funny typo.
  • anon
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  • enraged_camel
    Maybe it's just me but it blows my mind that this tiny thing cost $20k. I wish building stuff in the West wasn't so expensive.
  • sailfast
    Looks like a great setup!$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!
  • world2vec
    $20k is way too much money for that.
  • tristor
    I considered doing this or buying a house that already had an ADU/casita when we were house shopping, but I have a very different situation with being mostly home alone during the day and a dedicated room in the house for an office. I still think this might be an ideal though, because having a physically separate space has both psychological and physical advantages. Particularly, I wish I could pre-wire a /lot/ of networking in the space and separately air condition it, because I prefer much colder temperatures and it'd be cheaper to keep a separate office at 68F and the house at 74F than try to keep the house at 68-70F.
  • bellowsgulch
    He spent way too much.
  • vinyl7
    I can't even afford a home and yet some people are constructing secondary dwellings on their property. The wealth disparity in this country is massive
  • 1970-01-01
    Not a great idea for those in snowy areas of the USA. A short burst of snow storms and now to get to work you're dealing with typical access problems such as frozen doors, shoveling, ice, and cleaning up the melt or adding some small mudroom to get in and out during the day. Also, watching your kids play and build a snowman right in front of your window while you sit in a meeting would feel like torture.