Posted by surprisetalk 15 hours ago
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
Also worth mentioning 2026 - 4 = 2022. Not a great year to be stick building from a cost perspective.
The main thing I’d advise people against and say you could have possibly saved on is the structure. Tuff Shed is usually over priced and could be built usually with $2k-3k of material and labor. But the time you did this may have made that hard too, all the contractors were slammed.
Thank you for the cool post.
You got raked over the coals. You can downvote me, but as someone who knows how to build structures man, I feel so sorry for people reading your message thinking this is OK.
This is really, really poor quality for the cost.
I’m not even a commercial builder. A bag of Portland cement concrete is $5/bag. You don’t need to pay $2k for such a small foundation.
Maybe he could have saved a few thousand with different subs (maybe) but your comments are nonsensical. I see tons of janky builds people post on Reddit and this is not one of them. You should spend your commenting time over there.
My calculus is to evaluate time, cost, and quality. If someone can match or beat me on 2/3 of those dimensions then I'll hire them.
This is the danger of "cheap projects" - they can grow legs before you know it, and you end up paying half the cost of increasing the square footage of the house (or the garage).
You get a finished and conditioned room, and it most likely added value to his house.
You can buy all the Quickcrete you want (not sure the last time you priced it), but it won’t make you good at pouring a level pad. That alone puts me off trying to do it some days.
An 8x10 6” slab has 1.5 cubic yards of concrete. Making concrete takes more than a bag of Portland cement, you also need gravel, sand, a mixer, a wood frame, a source of water, shovels, floats, et cetera. If you want rebar, add in steel and rebar tools and wire.
You could frame up the wood yourself and have Cemstone deliver the concrete but you still need to spread it out, float it, and finish it.
Instead of buying or renting all of that, I would sub it out. I subcontract out light pole bases and concrete pads for transformers, EV chargers, and other equipment all of the time.
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.
I have multiple Spotify playlists for this. What's neat is that I also listen to them for fun, but they also allow me to get into a work mindset.
So for me it's more of a mental walk.
In my opinion it's commuting to the office which sucks, and not working in the office: I had a couple years where I walked in to work every day, and that was basically ideal. (It was, ironically, a job I started while living on the opposite side of the country: I then moved to a place about a mile from the office, quite a pleasant walk through the heart of the city.)
Nah. Other people are selfish.
Shitty open floor plans, so that other peoples drive bys become distrations
Meeting rooms that are set up to hold only 3 people, because everyone wanted smaller rooms for their 1 on 1s, mean that most meeting rooms are now too small for you to gather your team in. Which leads to people having team meetings at their desks and goes back to point 1.
Crappy equipment. I work at a large enough bank that you will have heard of it, even outside the US. You get a 1080p monitor at your hot desk. After upgrading to a 1440p over a decade ago when those cheap Korean screens came out, and having a 4k for many years now, I struggle to go back to a 1080p. Applications have so much chrome because of the larger monitors.
Hot desks can fuck off too. Come into the office so you can sit with your team. Oh, but not everyone, you guys have to go to 6 rows down.
If the office was in a place where I could reasonably expect to find other jobs as well, then that could be part of my consideration, but I would never choose to live somewhere based primarily on whatever my current job is.
I've been in the game for almost 40 years now, and I'll say I've never had an office paid for by my employer that is as nice as that toughshed. I've never been in a dedicated office with a door, except when working from home.
Edit: ProTip: If you are doing concrete, rent a "Mud Mixer". Me an the kids were able to pour the 8x12x5" (130 bags of 80lbs) in well under a day, probably would have been even less if we had moved the bagged concrete to the pour site before the pour happened rather than as we were pouring.
I'm not a fan of commuting either but for me it's definitely the working in an office that sucks
Maybe if it wasn't an open office bullpen style place but I've only worked in places without private or semi private offices, or even cubes
This constrains the companies you can work at to ones with a local office, if you do not want to move house. If you want to live within walking distance of many companies, you could easily be looking at paying millions of dollars for a poor quality house.
There is a happy medium if you like offices (see below): co-working spaces.
> it's commuting to the office which sucks, and not working in the office
Most company offices are fucking horrific - open plan, atrocious coffee, noisy, full of people who won’t stay home when they are sick.
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
These days, I may as well not even have a door. I put auto-shutting hinges on it, but that failed as reminder/deterrent long ago.
We've got a 10x20 out back that was supposed to be my workshop, but it's filled with all the things most Americans put in their garages - because we don't have one. I'm seriously considering a deep purge and converting at least 1/2 of to an office; the distractions and context switching are disastrous.
I wonder if I can convert an existing shed...
In fact, probably better to just put your desk in the bathroom for maximum efficiency!
But down that path lies a cabin innawoods.
https://www.idler.co.uk/article/sheds-in-the-time-of-lockdow...
<https://singlefamily.fanniemae.com/originating-underwriting/...>
Why start and invest in a construction project for a building that may not be staffed long term? Perhaps renting a small coworking space in town is the safer financial move. And have your employer pay for it.
only as likely as literally every other scenario. the difference is you can continue to use your backyard office for your new job
> I had tried coworking spaces but didn’t love the vibe or the idea of spending hours in a phone booth.
Fantastic.
> I got a ton of quotes for installing a mini split. They ranged from $4-$7k, which was higher than I expected after researching the cost of a quality small unit and knowing this would be a tiny job for an HVAC contractor, especially because I had my electrician prewire the electrical. I was considering installing a DIY system (Mr. Cool DIY system with pre-charged AC lines), But found an HVAC contractor who would install a system for a much lower price than the other quotes I received (and he had great reviews on Thumbtack). In the end, I got a Daikin Mini-split, a common system with many replacement parts. The installation took about 5 hours, and my tech did a great job. I am glad I researched and got a lot of quotes for this one.
It cost me ~650$ total.
The next time I bought a minisplit (3.5kW one), I already had the tools and it cost me only 450$. A proper one meant for use during harsh winter would probably costs a bit more though, at around 1000$.
So I have set up a few of them for my family and friends so far. The units come pre-charged with gas for ~5M of ducts, there is nothing hard to set them up.
I also set up ESP32 controllers so I could attach them to Home Assistant, bypassing any Chinese cloud apps, etc.
>160 hours of education/vocational training and 2 years’ verifiable experience in the trade
To get the license to install minisplits (two years experience generally means working an apprenticeship).
It's no wonder install costs are so much in the US. And as you've experienced, they're hardly rocket science to install. The 160 hours training would be more than enough, I'm not sure why 2 years experience gets tacked on the end.
Easy to test for, though I'm not sure if you can do it for free like skillcat used to offer.
And in my state, I copy pasted what was required for a 'residential' HVAC license (idk if you meant commercial HVAC or just making money on installs).
Environmental law is the same way. You're mostly (details depend on jurisdiction) not supposed to pave anything without getting permission but if they pushed the issue on everyone who put a pad under their car port the rules would get changed.
They also don't 100% enforce the speed limit either.
Idk for Americas, but here in rural EU no one would give a fuck. Some will ask for help.
I figured it had to be because the US devices are very different but they seem to be the same, and the explanation given by the usual automaton suspect was that the climate control business in the US is basically a cartel with highly inflated prices and shady regulations around how they can be sold.
Not sure if the claim is valid, but the price diff is remarkable so there must be some explanation. Usually everything you can buy is cheaper in the US.
Where? No electrician is inspecting every house that goes up for sale in the US. Sure you can ask an electrician to inspect a house electrical… but that doesn’t bar a house sale anywhere I’ve ever seen.
But they do not remove the panel cover to look inside, nor do they open up any receptacle box anywhere to look at any of the wiring inside. So they wouldn't know (nor discover) if the wiring job was done well or done in a shoddy manner.
They won't stop you from selling the house as-is but some buyers will walk, some will demand you get it permitted, most will at least want a real inspection done. Getting as-built work permitted after the fact will cost 2-3x as much in permit costs than it would have if done properly, and it may require you to remove drywall to expose things for inspection, but as long as it meets code you won't have to rip everything out and have it redone by a licensed person. In most places you can do work on your own house, so it's the lack of permit that needs to be remedied.
I just sold a 120 year old house. “I don’t know” is a valid answer to the disclosure requirement but it better be true.
The city isn't in the business of busting doors and issuing citations if you replace kitchen cabinets without a permit. They basically act if someone credibly complains, which is mostly if you're doing some exterior additions / changes that annoy a neighbor.
Sure, if the odds are 50/50, or you go to jail, or the fines are $50k or something, then yeah, do it right from the start.
But if there's a 2% chance of getting caught, getting caught costs you 150%, and not getting caught costs you 10%...the choice is pretty obvious here, isn't it?
It took me a while to find a company to install a mini split I purchased on my own, and I paid $$ for labor. This was only because I didn't have the time.
That said, mini splits are so cheap (sub $500) that its easier to just purchase a new one than repair.
It doesn’t take long to install a mini-split condenser with a single air handler. Precast pad for the condensing unit, set the condensing unit on the pad (or buy a wall mount if you need to mount it off the ground), run sealtite to the condenser from the disconnect switch and pull in wire, drill two holes for the line sets and one hole for the power/signal cable that runs from the condenser to the air handler, mount the air handler, connect the line sets, plug in the power/signal cable, install and wire the thermostat. Seal the holes with silicone and turn the mini-split on.
It’s less than a day of work, finding a mechanical contractor to install equipment you furnish for $160-175/hr shouldn’t be hard, contractors just like ripping off homeowners because they don’t know any better.
You don’t really even need a mechanical contractor with precharged line sets, just ensure the disconnect switch is off and locked out before touching any line voltage wiring, and make sure you mount anything heavy to studs and not plywood or drywall.
They're literally designed to be easy to install, but in the US licensing requirements tend to be insane (in my state it's 2 years apprenticeship experience for their 'easier to get' mini-split license) and HVAC companies make more off whole home systems.
These things are regularly installed DIY by homeowners (illegally most of the time but you know), it doesn't take two years of experience to be able to install these without issue. 2 weeks, or half a dozen installs surely would be more than enough.
I did notice that you mentioned soffit vents. From the photos I am having a hard time picturing how those vents were installed on that shed since they are designed to allow airflow from the soffit to the ridge. Knowing that you had a ridge vent cut in it makes it likely to me that you used baffles to allow the airflow between soffit and ridge and then insulated between the baffles and the interior space. I don't see that in the photos though so I apologize if this makes no sense.
I like the way that you finished it all out. It looks very functional. I have often considered something similar for our property but have been tied up in so many other projects that it never seems to happen.
Good job for having a plan and making it happen.
You 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.
Compared to the total cost of the project, using 2x6 and correspondingly thicker standard pink fiberglass insulation (R-13 to R-15 for a 3.5" cavity vs R-19 to R-21 for a 5.5" cavity) the cost difference is not a lot.
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.
[1] e.g. https://www.pioneerminisplit.com/products/pioneer-ecoasis-50...
You are wrong about the impact of moderately high CO2 levels.
If nothing else, at least a well-ventilated room expels my farts and other airborne waste products.
And people don't want to sleep longer, they want to feel well-rested. So I think higher sleep efficiency is better.
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.
Electrical + AC is a firm line where that goes from shed to detached office.
I know someone who builds horse shelters that are larger than that, but a fraction of the cost, delivered. I've actually been thinking that if I wanted an outside office, I'd ask him to custom build one with the fourth wall closed (horse shelters are 3-sided) and I'd insulate and sheetrock it myself. IIRC he did our 10x30 one for about $2k, including delivery.
Around here, the cutoff for needing a permit for a "permanent structure" is 10'x12' which is a pretty good sized outside office.
Labor is expensive. You could probably close to double the size for an additional $10,000, you’d need another yard and a half of concrete for the foundation (6” depth*80 sqft = 40 cubic feet) and more material for the building, but not twice as much material, or labor. Electrical service could stay the same.l and the mini-split wouldn’t have to be much bigger.
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.
Can I ask you how you're designing it right now? I could whip up some designs for you for free.
Building code for snow load is a factor of location and elevation here. We are around 130 lb/sq ft.
Roof pitch can help with shedding, but then you've got other problems (roof avalanches can and do kill, not to mention snow up against materials that don't want to be wet all winter).
That's not too bad, that's just a floor (and that's for a flat roof, it gets less demanding with pitch).
Structurally a wet fart will hold up plenty of snow when we're talking spans on the order of 10ft. A garden shed that can literally roll away in a tornado is only a few hundred dollars of material different from one that can't.
Of course Tuff Shed (or anyone else) isn't gonna make a special product line for one town in CO or wherever that wants to de-facto outlaw the construction of shed by people less than a certain wealth level. Those people can have their stuff built from scratch at great cost. Of the dozen lost sales they were likely some of the most problematic anyway.
My feedback is merely: boy it'd be nice to have the option to just order a pre-built.
What did it do to you that you needed to insult it?