I built a small (8x10) shed in our backyard from scratch, mostly as a stress reliever from actual work. I realize the irony in doing more work to relax from work ... but carpentry is so tangent to computer work that it felt like an escape. A sort of real world Stardew Valley.
In terms of material cost it was maybe $2k at the end, but could have been cheaper (I splurged on slightly nicer versions of some things like plywood instead of OSB).
If you're even slightly handy it's a nice project to undertake. All the work is light enough on a shed that size that you can one man all of it.
It's hard to describe the primal feeling I get when I'm inside this shelter I built with my own hands. For all the back breaking work of it and all of its mistakes the feeling of satisfaction is immense.
Ever since the shelter in place order went up I've been out there working on little woodworking projects. Recently finished two small tables for around the house (https://i.imgur.com/ea67ANO.jpg) and a few misc house improvements.
I was looking for a hobby that, for once, did not involve sitting at a monitor and keyboard. So I decided to build a sailboat. Chesapeake Light Crafts sells kits. Basically, like a wooden model except 1) it's full-size, and 2) you are going to actually put your body in it and hopefully not drown. It's all thin plywood, which you assemble with wire (temporarily) and then epoxy. And sanding. Lots of sanding.
I have zero wood-working experience, so I went with the kit, providing pre-cut pieces, as opposed to buying plans and doing everything myself.
It's been slow of late, because my work area has been too cold for epoxy. I've been documenting my progress here: http://geophile.com/boat. (Can you tell I'm a backend developer?)
About that getting away from a keyboard thing: Funny how that worked out. As a complete newbie, I am very reliant on their excellent support people (phone, email, forum). At one point, I ran into a problem in which the parts didn't seem to line up with the manual. As it turned out, I had the 2.1 parts with the 2.0 manual. So they sent me the updated manual. This weird interlude was much closer to a software experience than I could have imagined.
That looks like a great boat to start with. I wanted to suggest another beginner boat;
The Puddle Duck is another beginner-focused sailboat. It's more of a sailing barge with squared off corners, but it's designed to fit standing on end inside a normal house against the wall, possibly as a bookshelf, when not in use. And it sails fairly well/better than expected given the design constraints.
Puddle Ducks are sort of the epitome of "I immediately understand how this goes together, even I can build this". It's not horribly efficient, or pretty, but it's designed to be built by anyone in a weekend and get you out on the water by sunday night. There is always time later to build your "dream boat".
I built Hull #62 back during a period of underemployment in a garage in Texas, was hugely helpful during that period. Looks like hull #1071 was recently completed in Germany.
Puddle Duck is sort of a scaled up, plywood version of an Optimist.
Optimist is a fantastic youth one design sailboat. It is good for two 7 year old children or one teenager up to about 140 lbs.
Puddle duck has significantly more form stability, as a result you can fit one Fat Dad + their kid + a dog comfortably in the boat.
The other biggest difference (besides total passenger weight) is that with mostly 90 degree angles, it can be built with a hand saw and some nails in a weekend. Optimist requires considerably more woodworking (or preferably, fiberglass) skills.
> I realize the irony in doing more work to relax from work
I love work. Love it. I'd likely do 20-80 hours of work a week (it'd probably vary a ton week by week) even if I didn't need to have a job for income. Not as an employee, might not even manage to make money off any of it though I'd probably try sometimes, but it'd still be work.
I don't much like doing the same kind of work 40ish hours a week, week after week after week. Kinda hate that, actually. So I think doing "more work" to relax from work makes perfect sense. Work of a sort that I, in the moment, want to do is relaxing.
Brandon Sanderson has written that he attributes his productivity to the fact that he can (mentally) take a break from one book by working on another book.
I did the same[1] Great relief from work. Its worth it s weight in gold as I have a separate building to commute to in the morning. My costs £2,497. As I wanted a bigger shed split into two parts. With double insinuation and lots of power outlets. Plus a big (MDF) desk.
Looks great! I see you're working with a small backyard, which explains the weird 17x6.5 foot dimensions, but I like the space in which you fit your shed.
For anyone else looking to build a shed, I recommend sticking with dimensional lumber defaults (generally, multiples of 4 feet) and going as big as your space and local licensing allows. Check your local laws, but in many townships in the US, you can build a 200 sqft accessory building before you have to deal with permits and all that rigamarole. Rather than selecting odd numbers, build something 12x16 = 196 square feet.
The biggest upgrade I'd recommend to make the thing a lasting enhancement to your property rather than something the next occupant will want to tear out would be to pour a concrete slab foundation.
One other thing is that the dimensional restrictions often apply only to "permanent structures." You can sometimes get away with larger buildings because in many locations if you don't have poured footings or a foundation, the structure isn't considered to be permanent.
> Check your local laws, but in many townships in the US, you can build a 200 sqft accessory building before you have to deal with permits and all that rigamarole
So others know, I just called my city's building department and asked what the rules were. They were very helpful! (It was max 120sqft in my area and something like 10' maximum height)
I had a friend in Missouri who said they had to get a permit for a shed of any size, so consulting local regs is super necessary. Heck, the Dwellito people should already be able to help with this as a part of the sales process, having zip-code level PDFs of requirements or something.
Yeah, insulated mine as well to help out with summer heat and cut the noise down a bit (don't like bothering my neighbors with power tools and such). Planning on covering the wall cavities with some 3/4" plywood soon for even more sound isolation.
There’s a rumor some company in SV, some time around the new millennium, was looking for a routing/router expert. I have no idea how the interview proceeded, probably done by a non SME, anyhow, they ended up hiring a guy who really knew routers, except the ones to work on wood. I think they kept him and he learned on the job...
Couldn’t agree more on the idea of woodworking as stress reliever. I am hooked with it, sometimes I got physically tired by working in the garage, but mentally I felt every minute is a treat.
Did you build the shed entirely from your own design? Or did you find some useful resource/plans that helped you know what to buy and do? Seems like an interesting project, but I don't even know where I'd get started with something like that.
I watched a lot of videos to learn, mostly from the HouseImprovements channel which specifically had a series on building a shed (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpJ1vJPFqImom-NN2fkBS0A). That gives the basic idea. You can find plans online easily, but I did do my own design in the end (in SketchUp).
Carpentry is very systematic; once you've learned the rules for framing walls/floors it's all straightforward from there.
/r/woodworking is more about finishing and fine work to me, I'd suggest starting at /r/homeimprovement. heck, i wouldn't doubt that there's a /r/backyardbattlestations sub too, though!
"It's hard to describe the primal feeling I get when I'm inside this shelter I built with my own hands. For all the back breaking work of it and all of its mistakes the feeling of satisfaction is immense."
Totally get it. The making (and using) tangible things vs. abstract coding outcomes is quite a different experience.
You might enjoy the book (or Audiobook) of Michael Pollan’s “A Place of My Own”, wherein he builds a writing shed with the help of a handyman and some plans from an architect. It was really enjoyable — one of those stories you can sink into and not want it to end.
Framing lumber is ok there. Even then it's a bit of a hunt and peck but you can get by. Nice woodworking lumber is a problem especially if you don't have a full shop with planer and jointer.
I had the same feeling. I'd been working on building software for so long that I wanted to build something with my hands. But I ended up building a whole house instead. It probably wasn't a good idea in retrospect to be so ambitious, but it turned out pretty cool: https://parkcitygreenhome.tumblr.com/
I ended up doing about 60% of the actual labor on a 7000 square foot house by myself with one laborer as an assistant. I did most of the foundation, framing, finish carpentry, flooring, stone masonry, siding, and electrical work myself.
Same! I built one in my backyard a couple of months ago, and it was one of the most gratifying things I've ever done! I highly recommend it to anyone if you're willing to put in some hard work. Pics https://imgur.com/a/11ECQWK
Awesome work. Thanks for sharing. I have a friend who is a university professor. He works as a carpentry laborer some during the week (hot sweaty hard manual work) and says that the satisfaction he gets from helping build a deck or porch is immense and helps him do better research at the university.
Thank you! It's sitting on a few 1 foot square paver stones, with about a cubic foot of gravel + some sand under each paver. Good enough for the weather around here (no freezing temps).
Ah, that was a good solution for your climate. Site prep here, PNW, would be more substantial and has always deterred me. But maybe your experience will kindle my motivation.
For something like a shed you can get away with just basic tools (hammer, drill, level, etc) and a circular saw. A nail gun and compressor are nice to have; same goes for a miter saw.
You read about pound dogs that are finally adopted, and they can run and frolic outside... but they still have to sleep in a crate because otherwise they suffer from anxiety.
> but they still have to sleep in a crate because otherwise they suffer from anxiety.
Do you sleep on the kitchen floor when it strikes your fancy, or do you sleep in a bed? You may notice that sleeping on the kitchen floor never does strike your fancy, which is instructive. Would you rest well in other random locations in your house?
My point is, wanting to sleep in the crate isn't modern canine neuroticism, it's just normal mammalian behavior. We like to sleep somewhere secure and comfy, and we like for it to be consistent.
I don't disagree, but I don't want to sleep on the kitchen floor because it's uncomfortable.
I also wouldn't want to sleep in a bed _in_ a cage, given the option of sleeping in a bed _outside_ of a cage.
And I think that we agree on the underlying reasoning; the consistency. I am just arguing that cubicles aren't an optimal place to spend your time, merely a convenient one for those that want to warehouse you while you work. The fact that it's consistent doesn't make it good.
I've been dreaming of building something like this since I read a blog post from Mr Money Mustache [1]. I'm still in university right now, so I don't have the means or the property to do this, but I love the idea of being able to separate my work from my home. I'm a firm believer (at least for myself) that doing too many diverse tasks in a single environment tampers the way we think of that environment.
I teach students study skill and time management at my Uni, and this is one of the most important things for a lot of them to learn, especially for students in the dorms. A single room where you eat, sleep, hang out, and study is a bad place to be productive. If you need to get work done, it's going to be easy to get distracted because everything around you will have some association with Smash Bros or anything else you do in your spare time in that room. I tell them to find places that they only associate with work (the library is very common).
I'd love to have a space like that that is close to my home, but has some physical separation from the home. Not to mention how it would be a fun and rewarding project.
These are cool, but a bit pricey for me, and I'd want to challenge of building it, but I can see this being neat for other people.
We built a garden shed for my wife many years back. It started as a wood shed kit from Home Depot, then we re-designed some of the walls to put in some windows and French doors. We put a skylight in the roof, insulated it all, and put up chipboard for walls after I wired it for electricity. Some cupboards/counters from the local building recycling store, and the result is a nice space.
It was fairly straightforward, a lot of fun, and extremely useful.
Preparing the ground isn't mentioned. If you've never tried to make a chunk of ground perfectly level and compacted so that your shed won't sink and tilt... you won't get it right by yourself. Not the first time, anyway.
Is that included in the price? I was under the impression that this was going to be assembled somewhere else, then drop-shipped. From their site:
"After the units are built in the factory, they are fork lifted into a truck and driven to your property address. Once the truck arrives, a forklift will take the unit out of the truck and place it in place on your property."
This does not sound to me like they are doing anything beyond just building and finishing a box, and the price is fairly absurd for that.
Depends. I don't know which glass they are using but I did some back of the napkin calculations for a project I was dreaming of that had some "glass" and it would cost $8-9k just for the glass alone. It was not that much glass. Probably a bit more than this cube.
That's if you are looking for some premium glass that won't shutter into a thousand pieces and hurt you. Same for steel, aluminum, high quality wood, etc...
So yes, it can be very expensive. A cheap wooden dwelling can be pretty cheap though.
Yeah penny wise, pound foolish there by these people.
$9k seem expensive, but I don't know the price of these things so half willing to accept it. Then seeing they are charging $31 for a power cord now makes know they are charging too much for the the main thing they are selling.
Nope. I was looking at that thing thinking I could knock that out in a weekend, with the most expensive thing being materials. (the wood/drywall version anyway)
I can almost see a more traditional tech company buying a bunch of those for their workers in the current climate, even at such a ridiculous markup, just to guarantee a "standard" workspace.
Is there some context to who designed this and why? That framing doesn't look like anything a carpenter would produce and I'm 99% sure it wouldn't be code compliant in Oregon at least.
It was meant (I guess) as a DIY project and really it's a shed so the process is similar and the 100 square foot print is usually the largest structure you can build (in a lot of jurisdictions) without a permit/inspections/code.
I mean, just because you're technically exempt doesn't mean that building codes don't matter. It's still generally a pretty good starting point for how to build a safe structure that you shouldn't deviate from just for the heck of it.
Costco actually sells a couple of these with a very similar idea [1]. Surprisingly very expensive too (9K+). But they sell sheds too that are 2K- so I'm not sure what the benefits are? Maybe better built quality and finishes?
The Costco one is "installed". I can't tell if it's insulated, but it looks like it -- and that along with properly sealed doors/windows (like you'd have in your house), finished interior walls, electrical/lights (?) are a big difference from what you get with a $2000 shed intended for storing your lawnmower.
Another good distinction is Dwellito says "delivered to your front door". I don't know about you, but for me that would be.. quite inconvenient. Getting an assembled 10x10 (? not sure exterior size) shed into my backyard would involve either disassembling a large part of a shared fence (which is 50% my neighbour's), or using a fairly large crane to lift it completely over the house.
> Surprisingly very expensive too (9K+). But they sell sheds too that are 2K- so I'm not sure what the benefits are?
At a glance, better looks and insulated exterior doors like you'd have as an exterior door on a house, rather than thin shed doors that aren't designed for temperature control at all. Probably the windows are better, too. Hard to tell what else. Dunno what about it justifies that much higher a price but better doors & windows, wall insulation, some kind of interior wall cladding rather than just exposed studs, better sealing like you'd have on a house (guessing on the last three, see no evidence of it) and you could get up around a couple grand more on the materials cost.
It looks like all the ones in the $1-3k range are unfinished to some degree. You'd need to get electrical wiring, insulation, drywall and flooring. It gives you a few different options for exteriors and space to buy one and more customization options, you're going to need to put in some manual labor somewhere along the lines so the question becomes: is it better to spend ~$10k for a fully finished product, $1-3k + parts & labor for a prefab or hire someone to build the whole thing from scratch? I don't know what it would cost to hire a contractor to make something like this, but these pre-made options give you a good idea of where you might want to draw the line on pricing.
I've placed a converted sea container in our backyard (photo: https://www.msgtrail.com/about/) a few years ago. Insululation, floors, walls, windows, wiring, and transport (75 km by truck) cost approx EUR 12k. I had to install AC after the first summer because, although well-ventilated, it simply became too hot inside during warm days even though the studio is surrounded by trees. Using a sea container is a great start for this kind of object because it's sturdy and easy to adapt e.g. by cutting out sections for windows and doors. Cell phone reception is not stellar but adequate (2 to 3 out of 5 bars).
This is so cool! Erik, would you mind posting some more pictures of your container office? It looks very Ex Machina like from the picture and I'd love to see more and maybe even learn how you did what you did with it if possible.
A buddy of mine built his house and office out of shipping containers. Really cool project, I wish I had some pictures of it. I love seeing stuff like this repurposed.
I note the small power station listed in their accessories ...
Anyone interested in such a device should really consider the Dewalt Flexvolt power station (DCB1800B) because it lets you use your tool batteries as the modular, replaceable source of the power:
... which is a nice intersection of utility. Output is a very strong 15 amps (although non-perfect-sine-wav) which I have used to start and power air compressors and other motors.
... and then you can use the batteries in your tools.
If you get the 9ah batteries you can run a fridge for a few hours. I find this setup to be much more utilitarian than a dedicated battery station
The non-perfect sine wave means I'm afraid to plug anything important into it (say, a laptop). It drains faster than I thought it would (I think its efficiency isn't very good). I've got the 6ah batteries on it and can only work with my small table saw for about two hours (not running continuously, just the normal off-and-on of working). Charging is very slow, the individual charger works faster. You can't charge and use it at the same time. It's HEAVY; I think it weighs more than the four huge batteries I put on it.
That said, it has its uses. Wait for it to go on sale; it frequently sells for half or less of its MSRP.
All valid points. I personally use the 9ah batteries and am fairly happy with the capacity. It is, indeed, known to be (relatively) slow at charging the batteries as opposed to the individual charger.
Motor start/stop is fairly energy intensive so it doesn't surprise me that you can only run the table saw for two hours...
Yeah I've been meaning to throw a kill-a-watt on the saw and see how much it's using exactly. But I've also run, for example, fans off the power station and they seemed to die faster than I thought they would.
That's fantastic. It's almost like a game mechanic, where batteries can be charged by a device, but also power the same device.
I think this is the direction we are heading. Solar panels (or other form of local generation), sending energy to any connected storage devices (an EV, this power station), and then later on sent to other devices that might need it.
In the bay area, I used this company to build a unfinished shed for storage. But they can also finish it with drywall, insulation, etc. They have the pricing all on their brochure. And you can visit them and experience the sheds at your leisure. They are familiar with permitting requirements of bay area cities.
Feels like an easy pivot to quarantariums where you can keep family and friends safely contained for 2 weeks before allowing them into your home while being able to keep an eye on them.
Sorry you're right, I mixed up who I was replying to.
You'd talk to a regular home builder. Some may not want to do a project that small but many would be happy to. If you really want plans there are many places on the internet that sell them.
I just had a shed installed for my wife as a place for her to sew and other stuff. I luckily was able to get an electrician out to wire it up for power. All together, I spent like 6K for everything, although I need to get drywall put in. It was a 20th anniversary gift for the wife. Now it's her office while she has to work from home.
It's an intriguing concept, price aside. I can see people paying for a space where they just can't hear the kids yelling and screaming.
I guess I'm just wondering how it would work in the northeast, when you've got 0°F days and 98°F days. I get that it has an AC/heat pump (for $3,000 extra), but the fact that every morning you're going to need to heat/cool the thing from scratch feels like it could get real expensive real quick. Does this thing have decent insulation? (Judging from how thin the walls look from the photos, it seems no.) Are the window/door double-paned?
I suppose this is really intended for more moderate climates, no?
"workout area" because nothing inspires productivity more than the lack of fresh air and the stench of post-workout body as you sit back down at your desk in your shed.
For 9 grand you could buy a used RV and have a bathroom, shower, break room with kitchenette, battery, generator (engine), rest area, and the ability to move your office wherever you need to work.
I'm sure they know more about permitting than I do, but there's been a monetary factor to consider in the places I've lived. E.g., any home improvement greater than X dollars requires a permit, even indoors.
Not judging whether this is useful or economic in anyway, but I love the concept. Some time ago, I found a different site offering larger modular homes. [1]
Can you imagine the echo in one of those things? Plus, for the price of one of those, I'd be tempted to pick up a used storage container and renovate that.
> You have several options when it comes to temperature control. Depending on your climate needs, you can save money by using a floor fan or go with a AC unit. Since the mini-office is...mini...it is a lot easier to heat and cool a small space.
For the price, you'd think it would come with a central A/C and a mini beer fridge.
I don't know, if its reasonably insulated a person and a laptop can get a space comfortable fairly quickly and a little space heater has no problem with something that small in all but the coldest weather.
Damn. Dwellito have done a really good job here. I was trying to figure out how anyone "wins" in this space and it looks like they've aggregated all the supply to create a comprehensive marketplace for the built environment. Nice work to whomever made this.
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In terms of material cost it was maybe $2k at the end, but could have been cheaper (I splurged on slightly nicer versions of some things like plywood instead of OSB).
If you're even slightly handy it's a nice project to undertake. All the work is light enough on a shed that size that you can one man all of it.
It's hard to describe the primal feeling I get when I'm inside this shelter I built with my own hands. For all the back breaking work of it and all of its mistakes the feeling of satisfaction is immense.
Photo (was still working on the doors when this pic was taken): https://i.imgur.com/FogNzBP.jpg
Ever since the shelter in place order went up I've been out there working on little woodworking projects. Recently finished two small tables for around the house (https://i.imgur.com/ea67ANO.jpg) and a few misc house improvements.