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

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.

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.

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.)

https://www.idler.co.uk/article/sheds-in-the-time-of-lockdow...

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.

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.

The biggest problems I see is wanting to frame out the walls with 2x6's for thicker insulation, ceiling trusses at 16 oc for snow load and thicker for insulation as well (or lose the headroom and build a traditional ceiling/attic), and of course more heating load from the heat pump.

Can I ask you how you're designing it right now? I could whip up some designs for you for free.

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.

My mother-in-law lives in rural Missouri and had her 6x10 bathroom remodeled in 2025. Full gut replacement of everything. Total cost: $5600. I got a quote for something similar in a bit larger bathroom in our house in Seattle. Quoted price: $31,000.

Labor is a good chunk of cost, and the OP presented that he simply didn't have the time available to him to do that work himself. On the other hand, I built 20-ish feet of fencing for our backyard this summer, matching an existing design we had done several years ago. Quoted price from the same company that did it the first time: $9800. I did the work myself. My total cost: $1400.

That works out great, right? I also have a significant investment in all the right tools: compound mitre saw, construction-grade table saw, nail guns, impact/hammer/regular drills, angle grinders, power sanders, every drill bit in captivity -- I don't really lack for anything. These make a huge difference in the workmanship of the final outcome.

And that was just a fence. I've considered building an external office here at our house. When I start to take into account the scope of converting an outdoor shed to an acceptable backyard office, I hit the brakes. Electrical power under proper permits, adequate security, something that holds up under our weather, potential water/sewer access, and sufficient space to work (I can't live without a whiteboard)...there is more scope than meets the eye.

All things considered, I think the OP did a pretty good job here in terms of cost control and recognizing what he could do (windows) vs. needed someone else to do (proper electrical.)

In some parts of the world, people consider spending time outdoors to be a positive thing.

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.

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.

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.

My feedback is merely: boy it'd be nice to have the option to just order a pre-built.

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

You can yell at a contractor or the mirror but there's a tax.

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.

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 seen some properties where they build ponds underneath the indoor hallway with glass flooring to see the fish and stuff in the pond. Obviously wild things like that cost a bit more then a simple awning or covered walkway.

but over the next few years i learned so many hobby art projects: insulation, electrical, sheetrock. a few inspections, a few consults. a few surprises that people in this state can just go buy the stuff at a box store!

and then eventually, my 12x6 foot office appeared, the same width as a 1960s metal tanker desk. finally!

and ... i instantly hated working out there. i didnt make it 6 weeks. it's just an office for storing crap, now: i work out of the house, where the kitchen, dogs, bathroom, are. but the journey was worth it, even if the destination was not.

Thank you for the cool post.

[1] e.g. https://www.pioneerminisplit.com/products/pioneer-ecoasis-50...

I have a neighbor 100k+ into a foundation retrofit for his living room.

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.

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.

In fact, probably better to just put your desk in the bathroom for maximum efficiency!

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.

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).

But down that path lies a cabin innawoods.

Electrical + AC is a firm line where that goes from shed to detached office.

<https://singlefamily.fanniemae.com/originating-underwriting/...>

only as likely as literally every other scenario. the difference is you can continue to use your backyard office for your new job

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 went with PVC because it's the easiest to work with, NEC only required it be buried 12in below the surface for residential, but I went to 24". I oversized the PVC a bit so I had room to run more cables as well. I filled the trench with gravel, ran the PVC over that, then filled over it with some more gravel. A thin layer of dirt, marking tape and then the rest of the dirt. Rent a trencher if you have hard ground.

If you're having a licensed electrician do the work of connecting house and office power then you can ask them to run the conduit for it at the same time.

You're going to have to break that down for me.

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.

i tried to find a page that wasn't terrible for this, still kind of bad though:

https://www.gloryoptics.com/info/how-deep-does-spectrum-bury...

Smaller jobs are more expensive per square foot because not all costs scale with size. Which is why you see all these godawful TJ Homes being built where they just rip out the house, build a 3 story structure (including basement) that takes every square inch of the lot.

> I had tried coworking spaces but didn’t love the vibe or the idea of spending hours in a phone booth.

>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.

And then lose all the regulatory benefit of whatever shed exemption you're trying to use, get absolutely screwed on regulatory compliance and code whatnot that you're leveraging by having it be a detached outbuilding. And then get sneered at by HN when you say the rules as they apply to your situation are stupid.

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.

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.

You are wrong about the impact of moderately high CO2 levels.

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.

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.

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.

That's not too bad, that's just a floor (and that's for a flat roof, it gets less demanding with pitch).

Fantastic.

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?

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.

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.

It's got to suck to do the inspectors job. Having to keep up with whatever the code creators come up with, while also getting abused by every home owner and contractor in the area because they hate X,Y or Z. While trying to dodge political leverage from elected officials trying to get whatever pet mess they want done.

It's not a job I'd want, and I bet they get paid trash to boot.

Code compliance and inspections exist for a reason, and if you are lucky, the current inspector/code compliance dept in your local govt realizes it's to ensure the building doesn't fall down around your ankles when you least expect it and not to screw you over.

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).

Like if I'm bringing my bins to the road for pickup, I never bother putting on a jacket or w/e regardless of weather. If it does happen to actually be a torrential downpour, I just switch to a new t-shirt when I'm back inside.

Idk for Americas, but here in rural EU no one would give a fuck. Some will ask for help.

Easy to test for, though I'm not sure if you can do it for free like skillcat used to offer.

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.

Permit inspectors are basically unaccountable. There's no requirement that what you sign off meets code or that you'll sign off if it meets code.

As a builder, best thing is if you can fix whatever needs fixing while the inspector is there. If not, there's a non-zero chance you get a different inspector for the reinspection who likes it the way the first inspector said you couldn't do it.

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).

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.

You get a finished and conditioned room, and it most likely added value to his house.

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.