10 ms·

Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown

446 points by surprisetalk 2mo ago

biotinker 2mo ago
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.
- dmitriy_ko 2mo ago
  R-19. You can see label in the picture.
  - turtlebits 2mo ago
    Those are 2x4 studs, so R13, shoving thicker insulation in doesn't change much.
    - doodlebugging 2mo ago
      True. Depending on how heavily they compressed it to fit between those studs it will likely be less than R13. No matter whether you use fiberglass or rockwool, you should make sure you buy insulation sized to the depth of the cavity it will insulate. Then use an insulation knife to cut in for obstacles within the cavities.
ryandrake 2mo ago
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.
- juancn 2mo ago
  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). It's been a game changer
  - darmensdf 2mo ago
    Incredible!
- greenowl 2mo ago
  Stepping back a bit, if you are working remotely that's likely a proxy for an increased likelihood of job loss due to AI. 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.
  - stronglikedan 2mo ago
    > if you are working remotely that's likely a proxy for an increased likelihood of job loss due to AI. only as likely as literally every other scenario. the difference is you can continue to use your backyard office for your new job
  - y-curious 2mo ago
    One could argue this will get at least 50% ROI if you’re forced to sell your home. It’s strictly illegal in most places to room someone in one of these, but I’m sure people do it all the time. It won’t go to waste.
  - amatecha 2mo ago
    in the post: > I had tried coworking spaces but didn’t love the vibe or the idea of spending hours in a phone booth.
    - 2mo ago
8by3 2mo ago
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-sucks 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.
sailfast 2mo ago
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!
- ryandrake 2mo ago
  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.
  - JamesSwift 2mo ago
    Yeah I had the same thoughts about what they chose to DIY vs hire out. Insulation is so simple, and trim can be done at your leisure. But thats also not likely to save much overall since the contractors also know how simple those are.
    - jawilson2 2mo ago
      You're missing the important part: doing all of this WITH A ONE YEAR OLD CRAWLING AROUND AT HOME. You can get things done, it is just an order of magnitude longer that it would take without kid(s).
      - kslambert 2mo ago
        Author here. 100% this. I bought a fixer upper before my child was born. I gutted our house and did most of the work myself. I saved a lot of money. And I realized something… I don’t actually like home projects. Once my kid was born it exacerbated the issue. I didn’t have time. My wife is a full time caretaker, she was with my kid all week so nights and weekend is my time to lean in. Doing this myself would have strained our whole family. The time just isn’t there, I want to be a present dad, husband. And I want to do things I truly enjoy: making art, playing music, cycling. It’s not a fit for everyone where I’m at in life contracting out work I don’t want to do myself is preferable.
krn1p4n1c 2mo ago
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.
- veverkap 2mo ago
  Do you have to do PVC or can you just bury the fiber?
  - someothherguyy 2mo ago
    it depends on the cable type, what you are willing to spend, where you live, etc 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-their-cable-a-fib-103478356.html https://www.gloryoptics.com/info/how-deep-does-spectrum-bury...
  - krn1p4n1c 2mo ago
    Like /u/someothherguyy said it depends on the cable type. There are shielded and jacketed outdoor cables that don't require PVC/EMT, but usually you'll have to terminate them yourself so there's additional tooling required. 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.
trumbitta2 2mo ago
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.
- Johnny555 2mo ago
  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.
- swader999 2mo ago
  There's probably lots of ways to secure it if you think about it.
- rconti 2mo ago
  It doesn't look any easier to break into than my house. Which is to say -- pretty easy, and yet, home break-ins are pretty uncommon.
  - trumbitta2 2mo ago
    I don't know. That's a wooden shed, while my house is brick and concrete with a common European armored door and roller shutters.
    - rconti 2mo ago
      Well, in suburban Portland, where the wooden shed is, the house will be similar construction. You could very, very easily drill a hole in the exterior wall, reach through the hole, and unlock the door from the inside. In fact, in many homes (like my own), there's a window directly adjacent to the doorknob, so you could more easily just smash the glass, reach in, and unlock the door. And yet, it's quite uncommon for that to actually happen, and not something I spend any time worrying about. In more urban settings or higher-crime neighborhoods, of course, people take more precautions.
eysquared 2mo ago
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.
- jtbaker 2mo ago
  Sounds like Tahoe.
- dalyons 2mo ago
  What if you just put heat tape on the roof? These sheds have small roofs, shouldn’t be prohibitive
  - eysquared 2mo ago
    Heat tape isn't very effective with storms dropping multiple feet of wet snow in under 24 hours (or in general).
    - dalyons 2mo ago
      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
      - dalyons 2mo ago
        also idk, tons of people up here have regular sheds for various purposes and they seem to survive just fine
      - dave78 2mo ago
        Do people in Tahoe heat-tape their whole roof or just the edge where ice dams would otherwise form? I've only ever seen the latter, and even doing that will be noticeable on your power bill.
bellowsgulch 2mo ago
He spent way too much.
alehlopeh 2mo ago
Insulating -> insulting is a funny typo.
enraged_camel 2mo ago
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.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2mo ago
  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.)
- cityofdelusion 2mo ago
  The building is cheap, the labor is expensive. I built a much larger shed in volumetric space last year for 1/4th the cost.
  - pizzafeelsright 2mo ago
    Almost a universal rule for all construction over my last 20 years has been (Materials x 4) + 20% for profit/overage. You can yell at a contractor or the mirror but there's a tax.
- jroseattle 2mo ago
  True, things in the west tend to cost more than elsewhere (I'm in Seattle WA.) 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.)
deleted 2mo ago
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gfat 2mo ago
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.
- learn_more 2mo ago
  Now is the time https://buildfreely.com https://buildfreely.com
- dearilos 2mo ago
  Have you started designing? If you're open to it - I could help you jump start this and give you a few designs for free based on what you're thinking about.
1970-01-01 2mo ago
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.
- titanomachy 2mo ago
  I'm sure it would increase the cost of the project by many times and require more complex permits, but just think how cool it would be to access your office shed through an underground tunnel.
  - Jeremy1026 2mo ago
    Paging Colin Furze.
- mindslight 2mo ago
  But you've got to shovel and clear snow regardless? Shoveling a small path and being careful how you take off your shoes sure beats scraping ice off of a car and dealing with the plows' windrow. 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.
mtlynch 2mo ago
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.
- gehwartzen 2mo ago
  Honestly, I would recommend just doing it yourself. Especially if you have a contractor pull in the electrical connection for it. I installed a pre-charged unit in a much more complicated attic setup (condenser mounted to outside wall on second floor, 20' of refrigerant lines run with lots of angles) and the whole thing took 6-8 hours with no experience. Mounting it to a shed where you're basically just cutting a hole in a wall and the indoor unit and outdoor unit are in more or less the same location should be extremely straight forward. The unit cost me less than $1k five years ago and has been running perfectly ever since.
  - lstodd 2mo ago
    Pulling in the electrical connection is actually simpler. So you might as well do that yourself too.
    - pwg 2mo ago
      It is, but you'd be surprised at the number of folks who will DIY stuff, but won't DIY anything electrical.
javier123454321 2mo ago
Author, if you're here, there's a typo. > I was planning on insulting the office myself What did it do to you that you needed to insult it?
- snohobro 2mo ago
  It was cold in the winter and hot in the summer. How dare it do that to me. Clearly the only option is insult.
- saaaaaam 2mo ago
  I’m glad I’m not the only one who found this amusing!
  - mindslight 2mo ago
    "I was planning on insulting the office myself, but I figured it would just be easier to post it to hacker news"
js2 2mo ago
> 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/ 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.
- criddell 2mo ago
  I read it recently and I suspect Pollan's budget was probably quite a bit more than OP's. He hired an architect to design it, had custom windows designed and built, and hired local construction people to help him with the build. I really liked the book. Pollan is a great writer and who doesn't fantasize about having a cozy book-filled cabin as a workspace or retreat?
ipython 2mo ago
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.
- veverkap 2mo ago
  What do you use on the house and on the shed side to convert to CAT6?
  - taylorfinley 2mo ago
    You're looking for a "media converter", often sold in pairs for ~$50. Match it to the fiber connectors you buy.
    - Borealid 2mo ago
      Media converters are effectively a switch, but less flexible. I would buy a switch with an sfp+ port instead and use it with an appropriate sfp module.
  - ipython 2mo ago
    you can use a media converter or a small switch - for example: https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/switching-utility/products/usw-flex-2-5g-8-poe https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/switching-utility/produc.... You may already have a fiber aggregation switch in the house to handle other fiber connected devices.
rootsudo 2mo ago
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.
- xixixao 2mo ago
  In this day and age, where material stuff is so cheap, isn’t 20K for a tiny shed crazy? Clearly it is because it involves so much work, and work is so expensive, but I can’t help but think there should be a technical solution to this. Or buildings are just not automatable? I’m amazed.
  - throwthrowuknow 2mo ago
    You could do it for less than half that cost if you do your own labour. I actually came into the article thinking that’s what they did but was disappointed.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 2mo ago
    This is pretty fancy to call it a shed. Walk outside any Lowe’s or Home Depot and you will see several pre-built options that can be had for $500-$4000 with them getting increasingly elaborate. Electrical + AC is a firm line where that goes from shed to detached office.
    - olyjohn 2mo ago
      I mean I was just in Costco and they were selling some 8x12 sheds for like $6500. They weren't even finished inside. Just a floor, 4 walls and a roof. No foundations, no insulation, no sheetrock, no power. I suck at carpentry and even I could build that in a few days.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 2mo ago
    It's probably mostly labor cost. An 8x10 shed kit starts at under $US2k but if you pay someone to assemble it, including electrical, the price will go up very quickly. 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.
titanomachy 2mo ago
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.
- doctorpangloss 2mo ago
  There isn't really any clinical evidence for CO2 levels impacting stuff beyond so called "sleep efficiency," where the effect is small (above 1000 ppm is 5% reduction in sleep efficiency) and it has the counterintuitive effect that less efficient sleep is sleeping longer, which is usually what people want. That said, placebo effects are still real.
  - titanomachy 2mo ago
    It might be that poor ventilation gives me headaches for other reasons, and CO2 concentration is just a useful proxy that's easy to measure. The evidence seems to support this idea, whereas like you said the evidence for CO2 in isolation is pretty questionable. 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.
  - ungreased0675 2mo ago
    https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2012/10/17/elevated-indoor-carbon-dioxide-impairs-decision-making-performance/ https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2012/10/17/elevated-indoor-carbon... You are wrong about the impact of moderately high CO2 levels.
    - 2mo ago
tristor 2mo ago
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.
skullone 2mo ago
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
- digitalsushi 2mo ago
  i did a 24x36, with a loft. 2015, 32,000 bucks from lavalley's in newport nh, installed 80 miles away in another random town. poured slab. 6 windows, 2 garage doors. i realized, all i did was build a garage, not a work from home office. 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.
learn_more 2mo ago
DIY https://buildfreely.com https://buildfreely.com
- spicyusername 2mo ago
  Great link, thanks for sharing
gehwartzen 2mo ago
For those wanting more inspiration for similar builds, this reddit community is pretty good: https://www.reddit.com/r/shedditors/ https://www.reddit.com/r/shedditors/
vondur 2mo ago
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?
- dn3500 2mo ago
  OP put in 60 amp service. I can't imagine why you would need that much, even with the minisplit. My flat is three times the size of his office and has an electric water heater and washing machine and it has 32 amp service.
world2vec 2mo ago
$20k is way too much money for that.
- smalltorch 2mo ago
  ~$250/sf isnt really that far off from median though.
  - Glyptodon 2mo ago
    It's crazy for something that starts with a Tuff shed and has no plumbing. Should be more along the lines of a garage in terms of PPSQFT IMO opinion.
- jms703 2mo ago
  No, that is the cost of labor and materials.
Jeremy1026 2mo ago
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.
- 5upplied_demand 2mo ago
  Buy an umbrella?
  - Jeremy1026 2mo ago
    Umbrellas are great at keeping your head and shoulders dry, but kind of suck beyond that.
    - Marsymars 2mo ago
      That's like a 5-10 second walk, I can't imagine your legs are going to get all that wet in that timespan. 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.
- zie 2mo ago
  You can put in an awning or covered walkway between the buildings. You can even do a fully enclosed, fully climate controlled hallway with lots of windows and doors out to the yard, etc. Just depends on how much you want to pay and your imagination. 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.
  - cucumber3732842 2mo ago
    >You can even do a fully enclosed, 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.
Rendello 2mo ago
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFP-fU0FsF0
vinyl7 2mo ago
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
- senordevnyc 2mo ago
  There is no country on earth that doesn't have the massive wealth disparity where some people can't afford to buy a home while other people can afford a shed.
starkparker 2mo ago
> In Portland, I didn’t need a permit for the building because it was under the size threshold 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.
- kslambert 2mo ago
  Author of the blog post here. That new "for business" line was added in 2024, a year after I completed this build. It's good to know now though in case we sell and I want to do another build like this.
ryan_glass 2mo ago
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).
- gib444 2mo ago
  Everything was cheap in 2018 And Scotland isn't Portland lol
someothherguyy 2mo ago
that is insanely expensive for what this is, but i suppose that depends on what you are willing to do yourself
kslambert 2mo ago
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
- saaaaaam 2mo ago
  This is all very well. But what about insulting your office?!
- fultonn 2mo ago
  > I am almost 4 years in Also worth mentioning 2026 - 4 = 2022. Not a great year to be stick building from a cost perspective.
- mindslight 2mo ago
  I'm in the middle of finishing out my own (significantly larger) shed I just had built, basically all DIY except for the structure itself. The number that popped into my head at the start of your post was $30k - each step adds up when you're paying small job overheads. That you did it for $20k is pretty great.
- bellowsgulch 2mo ago
  [flagged]
dearilos 2mo ago
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 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.
gitowiec 2mo ago
It's not building, it's telling others to build
arkensaw 2mo ago
$20k seems steep for whats effectively a small shed with a nice finish. Especially that the bare shed itself was $6k. In Ireland I can get an 18x10ft cabin for about €5k, and this is one of the most expensive countries
- s1artibartfast 2mo ago
  West coast prices are in a different ballpark. Im shocked at how cheap the concrete work was. I got 20 quotes and 6k was the cheapest for a 12x12 pour. I have a neighbor 100k+ into a foundation retrofit for his living room.
boredatoms 2mo ago
$20k to $50k for dedicated office is easily worth it. So much cheaper than moving house in most areas
ElCapitanMarkla 2mo ago
I did this in my backyard in NZ. Built out of "Structural Insulated Panels" it holds the heat well over winter and never gets too hot over summer. I spent about 14-15k NZD 2 years ago to get it setup. I wish I had done it years ago.
doodlebugging 2mo ago
For the author, I really like the way it turned out. Your choice of the larger windows does change the game for a space like that. You gained useful space on your property that can be reconfigured later if conditions change. 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.
dowonseo 2mo ago
I like that CO2 detector. I wonder if I could build one cheaply as a DIY project by buying and attaching the sensor to Raspberry Pi?
- pimlottc 2mo ago
  CO2 sensors are not all created equal. The price of a good one is a large chunk of the cost of the device.
  - vladak 2mo ago
    I have couple of true (and therefore more expensive) CO2 sensors around the apartment, all of them Adafruit SCD-40, each connected to its own ESP32 which broadcasts the metrics (including temperature and humidity) to MQTT broker which feeds into Prometheus. A Grafana instance running on a Raspberry Pi can then post an alert which goes into PagerDuty and also to a small speaker connected to the RPi to play a distinct tune when the CO2 threshold is breached in one of the rooms. Then on my work desk (not in a shed, unfortunately) I have a separate ESP32 with a display to provide visual-only alerting there which taps into MQTT to get the metrics (see https://github.com/vladak/workmon https://github.com/vladak/workmon).
vist_orn 2mo ago
Lumber in 2022 was brutal. Same build today would probably land a lot lower.
walrus01 2mo ago
For anyone thinking of building like a 12x14 size back yard shed/office for year round ues, look long and hard and do the math on the cost difference in using 2x4 for the exterior wall framing vs 2x6 (like a real house). Lots of cheap shed plans default to 2x4, unfortunately. 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.
jfkfnfngnu 2mo ago
[flagged]
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
cjdupreez 2mo ago
These are some of the best posts on Hacker News - thank you for sharing! Overall a beautiful WFH office. I think the physical separation from your home is pretty underrated these days. Being able to turn off the lights, shut the door and walk to your house is the best way to disconnect physically and mentally.
hermitcrab 2mo ago
This post from 2009 shows the offices of lots of indie software developers: https://successfulsoftware.net/2009/07/27/where-i-program/ https://successfulsoftware.net/2009/07/27/where-i-program/ Might have some ideas for people thinking of setting up a home office. When I moved house I renovated an old summer house in the garden now and use that as my office. It is great. I just wish that I had put in an air source heat pump, rather than an electric radiator.
- olwmc 2mo ago
  As someone born after the year 2000 this stuff is like looking at both a future that never was, and a past that couldn't have been.
  - hermitcrab 2mo ago
    Home offices haven't changed that much, have they?
legitster 2mo ago
As I write this from my backyard office shed that my dad and I built together. All told we put about $3k in. If you want to do it much cheaper: - A Tuff shed is a bit overkill. For a small shed (anything under 8') you should really be pretty comfortable framing it yourself. There's no fancy cuts and it comes together fast. - Concrete foundation is definitely overkill. Unless you're storing a tungsten collection in there, simple post blocks are more than adequate. - Windows and doors! You can save a ton of money by finding secondhand fittings at Habitat for Humanity or Marketplace. You have the benefit of being able to design around what you have. - Forgo drywall altogether on the interior. Wood paneled walls are easier and cheaper (it doesn't hurt that I designed mine around a "British pub" theme. - A split system is WAY overkill for a space like this. Just leave a cutout in the wall to mount a decent window unit heat pump. If you know what you're doing, or have someone to help, you're looking at about 2-3 days of work.
wajdym1960 2mo ago
[dead]
gslin 2mo ago
Not sure what happened, but you can see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38466244 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38466244 this entry has already been posted in 2023, but the JSON-LD on this page says: { "@context": "https://schema.org/", "@type": "Article", "headline": "Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown", "image": "https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5ecc3aa9b8d8da6245a6cb5e/65677bd2d5c1eaaf0b6e69e6_Office.webp", "datePublished": "Aug 25, 2026", "dateModified": "Aug 25, 2026", "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Kyle Lambert" } }

446 points by surprisetalk 2mo ago

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.

dmitriy_ko 2mo ago
R-19. You can see label in the picture.
- turtlebits 2mo ago
  Those are 2x4 studs, so R13, shoving thicker insulation in doesn't change much.
  - doodlebugging 2mo ago
    True. Depending on how heavily they compressed it to fit between those studs it will likely be less than R13. No matter whether you use fiberglass or rockwool, you should make sure you buy insulation sized to the depth of the cavity it will insulate. Then use an insulation knife to cut in for obstacles within the cavities.

ryandrake 2mo ago

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.

juancn 2mo ago
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). It's been a game changer
- darmensdf 2mo ago
  Incredible!
greenowl 2mo ago
Stepping back a bit, if you are working remotely that's likely a proxy for an increased likelihood of job loss due to AI. 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.
- stronglikedan 2mo ago
  > if you are working remotely that's likely a proxy for an increased likelihood of job loss due to AI. only as likely as literally every other scenario. the difference is you can continue to use your backyard office for your new job
- y-curious 2mo ago
  One could argue this will get at least 50% ROI if you’re forced to sell your home. It’s strictly illegal in most places to room someone in one of these, but I’m sure people do it all the time. It won’t go to waste.
- amatecha 2mo ago
  in the post: > I had tried coworking spaces but didn’t love the vibe or the idea of spending hours in a phone booth.
  - 2mo ago

8by3 2mo ago

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-sucks 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.

sailfast 2mo ago

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!

ryandrake 2mo ago
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.
- JamesSwift 2mo ago
  Yeah I had the same thoughts about what they chose to DIY vs hire out. Insulation is so simple, and trim can be done at your leisure. But thats also not likely to save much overall since the contractors also know how simple those are.
  - jawilson2 2mo ago
    You're missing the important part: doing all of this WITH A ONE YEAR OLD CRAWLING AROUND AT HOME. You can get things done, it is just an order of magnitude longer that it would take without kid(s).
    - kslambert 2mo ago
      Author here. 100% this. I bought a fixer upper before my child was born. I gutted our house and did most of the work myself. I saved a lot of money. And I realized something… I don’t actually like home projects. Once my kid was born it exacerbated the issue. I didn’t have time. My wife is a full time caretaker, she was with my kid all week so nights and weekend is my time to lean in. Doing this myself would have strained our whole family. The time just isn’t there, I want to be a present dad, husband. And I want to do things I truly enjoy: making art, playing music, cycling. It’s not a fit for everyone where I’m at in life contracting out work I don’t want to do myself is preferable.

krn1p4n1c 2mo ago

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.

veverkap 2mo ago
Do you have to do PVC or can you just bury the fiber?
- someothherguyy 2mo ago
  it depends on the cable type, what you are willing to spend, where you live, etc 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-their-cable-a-fib-103478356.html https://www.gloryoptics.com/info/how-deep-does-spectrum-bury...
- krn1p4n1c 2mo ago
  Like /u/someothherguyy said it depends on the cable type. There are shielded and jacketed outdoor cables that don't require PVC/EMT, but usually you'll have to terminate them yourself so there's additional tooling required. 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.

trumbitta2 2mo ago

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.

Johnny555 2mo ago
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.
swader999 2mo ago
There's probably lots of ways to secure it if you think about it.
rconti 2mo ago
It doesn't look any easier to break into than my house. Which is to say -- pretty easy, and yet, home break-ins are pretty uncommon.
- trumbitta2 2mo ago
  I don't know. That's a wooden shed, while my house is brick and concrete with a common European armored door and roller shutters.
  - rconti 2mo ago
    Well, in suburban Portland, where the wooden shed is, the house will be similar construction. You could very, very easily drill a hole in the exterior wall, reach through the hole, and unlock the door from the inside. In fact, in many homes (like my own), there's a window directly adjacent to the doorknob, so you could more easily just smash the glass, reach in, and unlock the door. And yet, it's quite uncommon for that to actually happen, and not something I spend any time worrying about. In more urban settings or higher-crime neighborhoods, of course, people take more precautions.

eysquared 2mo ago

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.

jtbaker 2mo ago
Sounds like Tahoe.
dalyons 2mo ago
What if you just put heat tape on the roof? These sheds have small roofs, shouldn’t be prohibitive
- eysquared 2mo ago
  Heat tape isn't very effective with storms dropping multiple feet of wet snow in under 24 hours (or in general).
  - dalyons 2mo ago
    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
    - dalyons 2mo ago
      also idk, tons of people up here have regular sheds for various purposes and they seem to survive just fine
    - dave78 2mo ago
      Do people in Tahoe heat-tape their whole roof or just the edge where ice dams would otherwise form? I've only ever seen the latter, and even doing that will be noticeable on your power bill.

bellowsgulch 2mo ago

He spent way too much.

alehlopeh 2mo ago

Insulating -> insulting is a funny typo.

enraged_camel 2mo ago

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.

beezlebroxxxxxx 2mo ago
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.)
cityofdelusion 2mo ago
The building is cheap, the labor is expensive. I built a much larger shed in volumetric space last year for 1/4th the cost.
- pizzafeelsright 2mo ago
  Almost a universal rule for all construction over my last 20 years has been (Materials x 4) + 20% for profit/overage. You can yell at a contractor or the mirror but there's a tax.
jroseattle 2mo ago
True, things in the west tend to cost more than elsewhere (I'm in Seattle WA.) 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.)

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

gfat 2mo ago

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.

learn_more 2mo ago
Now is the time https://buildfreely.com https://buildfreely.com
dearilos 2mo ago
Have you started designing? If you're open to it - I could help you jump start this and give you a few designs for free based on what you're thinking about.

1970-01-01 2mo ago

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.

titanomachy 2mo ago
I'm sure it would increase the cost of the project by many times and require more complex permits, but just think how cool it would be to access your office shed through an underground tunnel.
- Jeremy1026 2mo ago
  Paging Colin Furze.
mindslight 2mo ago
But you've got to shovel and clear snow regardless? Shoveling a small path and being careful how you take off your shoes sure beats scraping ice off of a car and dealing with the plows' windrow. 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.

mtlynch 2mo ago

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.

gehwartzen 2mo ago
Honestly, I would recommend just doing it yourself. Especially if you have a contractor pull in the electrical connection for it. I installed a pre-charged unit in a much more complicated attic setup (condenser mounted to outside wall on second floor, 20' of refrigerant lines run with lots of angles) and the whole thing took 6-8 hours with no experience. Mounting it to a shed where you're basically just cutting a hole in a wall and the indoor unit and outdoor unit are in more or less the same location should be extremely straight forward. The unit cost me less than $1k five years ago and has been running perfectly ever since.
- lstodd 2mo ago
  Pulling in the electrical connection is actually simpler. So you might as well do that yourself too.
  - pwg 2mo ago
    It is, but you'd be surprised at the number of folks who will DIY stuff, but won't DIY anything electrical.

javier123454321 2mo ago

Author, if you're here, there's a typo. > I was planning on insulting the office myself What did it do to you that you needed to insult it?

snohobro 2mo ago
It was cold in the winter and hot in the summer. How dare it do that to me. Clearly the only option is insult.
saaaaaam 2mo ago
I’m glad I’m not the only one who found this amusing!
- mindslight 2mo ago
  "I was planning on insulting the office myself, but I figured it would just be easier to post it to hacker news"

js2 2mo ago

> 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/ 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.

criddell 2mo ago
I read it recently and I suspect Pollan's budget was probably quite a bit more than OP's. He hired an architect to design it, had custom windows designed and built, and hired local construction people to help him with the build. I really liked the book. Pollan is a great writer and who doesn't fantasize about having a cozy book-filled cabin as a workspace or retreat?

ipython 2mo ago

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.

veverkap 2mo ago
What do you use on the house and on the shed side to convert to CAT6?
- taylorfinley 2mo ago
  You're looking for a "media converter", often sold in pairs for ~$50. Match it to the fiber connectors you buy.
  - Borealid 2mo ago
    Media converters are effectively a switch, but less flexible. I would buy a switch with an sfp+ port instead and use it with an appropriate sfp module.
- ipython 2mo ago
  you can use a media converter or a small switch - for example: https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/switching-utility/products/usw-flex-2-5g-8-poe https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/switching-utility/produc.... You may already have a fiber aggregation switch in the house to handle other fiber connected devices.

rootsudo 2mo ago

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.

xixixao 2mo ago
In this day and age, where material stuff is so cheap, isn’t 20K for a tiny shed crazy? Clearly it is because it involves so much work, and work is so expensive, but I can’t help but think there should be a technical solution to this. Or buildings are just not automatable? I’m amazed.
- throwthrowuknow 2mo ago
  You could do it for less than half that cost if you do your own labour. I actually came into the article thinking that’s what they did but was disappointed.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2mo ago
  This is pretty fancy to call it a shed. Walk outside any Lowe’s or Home Depot and you will see several pre-built options that can be had for $500-$4000 with them getting increasingly elaborate. Electrical + AC is a firm line where that goes from shed to detached office.
  - olyjohn 2mo ago
    I mean I was just in Costco and they were selling some 8x12 sheds for like $6500. They weren't even finished inside. Just a floor, 4 walls and a roof. No foundations, no insulation, no sheetrock, no power. I suck at carpentry and even I could build that in a few days.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2mo ago
  It's probably mostly labor cost. An 8x10 shed kit starts at under $US2k but if you pay someone to assemble it, including electrical, the price will go up very quickly. 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.

titanomachy 2mo ago

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.

doctorpangloss 2mo ago
There isn't really any clinical evidence for CO2 levels impacting stuff beyond so called "sleep efficiency," where the effect is small (above 1000 ppm is 5% reduction in sleep efficiency) and it has the counterintuitive effect that less efficient sleep is sleeping longer, which is usually what people want. That said, placebo effects are still real.
- titanomachy 2mo ago
  It might be that poor ventilation gives me headaches for other reasons, and CO2 concentration is just a useful proxy that's easy to measure. The evidence seems to support this idea, whereas like you said the evidence for CO2 in isolation is pretty questionable. 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.
- ungreased0675 2mo ago
  https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2012/10/17/elevated-indoor-carbon-dioxide-impairs-decision-making-performance/ https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2012/10/17/elevated-indoor-carbon... You are wrong about the impact of moderately high CO2 levels.
  - 2mo ago

tristor 2mo ago

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.

skullone 2mo ago

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

digitalsushi 2mo ago
i did a 24x36, with a loft. 2015, 32,000 bucks from lavalley's in newport nh, installed 80 miles away in another random town. poured slab. 6 windows, 2 garage doors. i realized, all i did was build a garage, not a work from home office. 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.

learn_more 2mo ago

DIY https://buildfreely.com https://buildfreely.com

spicyusername 2mo ago
Great link, thanks for sharing

gehwartzen 2mo ago

For those wanting more inspiration for similar builds, this reddit community is pretty good: https://www.reddit.com/r/shedditors/ https://www.reddit.com/r/shedditors/

vondur 2mo ago

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?

dn3500 2mo ago
OP put in 60 amp service. I can't imagine why you would need that much, even with the minisplit. My flat is three times the size of his office and has an electric water heater and washing machine and it has 32 amp service.

world2vec 2mo ago

$20k is way too much money for that.

smalltorch 2mo ago
~$250/sf isnt really that far off from median though.
- Glyptodon 2mo ago
  It's crazy for something that starts with a Tuff shed and has no plumbing. Should be more along the lines of a garage in terms of PPSQFT IMO opinion.
jms703 2mo ago
No, that is the cost of labor and materials.

Jeremy1026 2mo ago

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.

5upplied_demand 2mo ago
Buy an umbrella?
- Jeremy1026 2mo ago
  Umbrellas are great at keeping your head and shoulders dry, but kind of suck beyond that.
  - Marsymars 2mo ago
    That's like a 5-10 second walk, I can't imagine your legs are going to get all that wet in that timespan. 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.
zie 2mo ago
You can put in an awning or covered walkway between the buildings. You can even do a fully enclosed, fully climate controlled hallway with lots of windows and doors out to the yard, etc. Just depends on how much you want to pay and your imagination. 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.
- cucumber3732842 2mo ago
  >You can even do a fully enclosed, 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.

Rendello 2mo ago

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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFP-fU0FsF0

vinyl7 2mo ago

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

senordevnyc 2mo ago
There is no country on earth that doesn't have the massive wealth disparity where some people can't afford to buy a home while other people can afford a shed.

starkparker 2mo ago

> In Portland, I didn’t need a permit for the building because it was under the size threshold 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.

kslambert 2mo ago
Author of the blog post here. That new "for business" line was added in 2024, a year after I completed this build. It's good to know now though in case we sell and I want to do another build like this.

ryan_glass 2mo ago

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).

gib444 2mo ago
Everything was cheap in 2018 And Scotland isn't Portland lol

someothherguyy 2mo ago

that is insanely expensive for what this is, but i suppose that depends on what you are willing to do yourself

kslambert 2mo ago

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

saaaaaam 2mo ago
This is all very well. But what about insulting your office?!
fultonn 2mo ago
> I am almost 4 years in Also worth mentioning 2026 - 4 = 2022. Not a great year to be stick building from a cost perspective.
mindslight 2mo ago
I'm in the middle of finishing out my own (significantly larger) shed I just had built, basically all DIY except for the structure itself. The number that popped into my head at the start of your post was $30k - each step adds up when you're paying small job overheads. That you did it for $20k is pretty great.
bellowsgulch 2mo ago
[flagged]

dearilos 2mo ago

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 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.

gitowiec 2mo ago

It's not building, it's telling others to build

arkensaw 2mo ago

$20k seems steep for whats effectively a small shed with a nice finish. Especially that the bare shed itself was $6k. In Ireland I can get an 18x10ft cabin for about €5k, and this is one of the most expensive countries

s1artibartfast 2mo ago
West coast prices are in a different ballpark. Im shocked at how cheap the concrete work was. I got 20 quotes and 6k was the cheapest for a 12x12 pour. I have a neighbor 100k+ into a foundation retrofit for his living room.

boredatoms 2mo ago

$20k to $50k for dedicated office is easily worth it. So much cheaper than moving house in most areas

ElCapitanMarkla 2mo ago

I did this in my backyard in NZ. Built out of "Structural Insulated Panels" it holds the heat well over winter and never gets too hot over summer. I spent about 14-15k NZD 2 years ago to get it setup. I wish I had done it years ago.

doodlebugging 2mo ago

For the author, I really like the way it turned out. Your choice of the larger windows does change the game for a space like that. You gained useful space on your property that can be reconfigured later if conditions change. 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.

dowonseo 2mo ago

I like that CO2 detector. I wonder if I could build one cheaply as a DIY project by buying and attaching the sensor to Raspberry Pi?

pimlottc 2mo ago
CO2 sensors are not all created equal. The price of a good one is a large chunk of the cost of the device.
- vladak 2mo ago
  I have couple of true (and therefore more expensive) CO2 sensors around the apartment, all of them Adafruit SCD-40, each connected to its own ESP32 which broadcasts the metrics (including temperature and humidity) to MQTT broker which feeds into Prometheus. A Grafana instance running on a Raspberry Pi can then post an alert which goes into PagerDuty and also to a small speaker connected to the RPi to play a distinct tune when the CO2 threshold is breached in one of the rooms. Then on my work desk (not in a shed, unfortunately) I have a separate ESP32 with a display to provide visual-only alerting there which taps into MQTT to get the metrics (see https://github.com/vladak/workmon https://github.com/vladak/workmon).

vist_orn 2mo ago

Lumber in 2022 was brutal. Same build today would probably land a lot lower.

walrus01 2mo ago

For anyone thinking of building like a 12x14 size back yard shed/office for year round ues, look long and hard and do the math on the cost difference in using 2x4 for the exterior wall framing vs 2x6 (like a real house). Lots of cheap shed plans default to 2x4, unfortunately. 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.

jfkfnfngnu 2mo ago

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deleted 2mo ago

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cjdupreez 2mo ago

These are some of the best posts on Hacker News - thank you for sharing! Overall a beautiful WFH office. I think the physical separation from your home is pretty underrated these days. Being able to turn off the lights, shut the door and walk to your house is the best way to disconnect physically and mentally.

hermitcrab 2mo ago

This post from 2009 shows the offices of lots of indie software developers: https://successfulsoftware.net/2009/07/27/where-i-program/ https://successfulsoftware.net/2009/07/27/where-i-program/ Might have some ideas for people thinking of setting up a home office. When I moved house I renovated an old summer house in the garden now and use that as my office. It is great. I just wish that I had put in an air source heat pump, rather than an electric radiator.

olwmc 2mo ago
As someone born after the year 2000 this stuff is like looking at both a future that never was, and a past that couldn't have been.
- hermitcrab 2mo ago
  Home offices haven't changed that much, have they?

legitster 2mo ago

As I write this from my backyard office shed that my dad and I built together. All told we put about $3k in. If you want to do it much cheaper: - A Tuff shed is a bit overkill. For a small shed (anything under 8') you should really be pretty comfortable framing it yourself. There's no fancy cuts and it comes together fast. - Concrete foundation is definitely overkill. Unless you're storing a tungsten collection in there, simple post blocks are more than adequate. - Windows and doors! You can save a ton of money by finding secondhand fittings at Habitat for Humanity or Marketplace. You have the benefit of being able to design around what you have. - Forgo drywall altogether on the interior. Wood paneled walls are easier and cheaper (it doesn't hurt that I designed mine around a "British pub" theme. - A split system is WAY overkill for a space like this. Just leave a cutout in the wall to mount a decent window unit heat pump. If you know what you're doing, or have someone to help, you're looking at about 2-3 days of work.

wajdym1960 2mo ago

[dead]

gslin 2mo ago

Not sure what happened, but you can see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38466244 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38466244 this entry has already been posted in 2023, but the JSON-LD on this page says: { "@context": "https://schema.org/", "@type": "Article", "headline": "Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown", "image": "https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5ecc3aa9b8d8da6245a6cb5e/65677bd2d5c1eaaf0b6e69e6_Office.webp", "datePublished": "Aug 25, 2026", "dateModified": "Aug 25, 2026", "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Kyle Lambert" } }