Garden building as office

[Brigadier]

Hello all,

Looking to return office in house to home use, so considering a "tech shed" at the top of the garden.
Peace and quiet, own space, and frees a bit of the house up.
Would a decent tongue-and-groove garden building be a reasonable starting point? Don't want brick build or similar.

Any tips, links, pitfalls to be aware of?

Wouldn't fret too much about security, as "have laptop, will travel"!

Thanks in anticipation.

 

[big-all]

go for tounge and groove shiplap

 

[Tim84]

I did exactly the same. Got a roughly 7 x 14' T&G tannalised shed. It was the thickest timber they did too but cannot remember how thick. Just shy of £1k delivered and built.

I had a partition in the middle and a door in each end too. One end I just added racking to use it as a storage shed. The other end I battened out with 2x4, lined with 50mm Celotex (including the floor and ceiling), over-boarded with OSB and painted.

Fitted sockets, electric rad, lights etc. and a second WiFi Router then had an electrician fit a small consumer unit and wire it back to the main consumer unit in the house with armoured cable. Ran an external Cat6 from the Router in my house too so I could use the Router in my office as a wired switch and WiFi extender.

Security wise I just added hinge bolts and rack bolts to the battened and insulated door, along with a standard lock and a sliding lock inside to close the door tight and keep as sealed as possible when I'm in there. Added reflective window film too so no one can see in. At night I have internal OSB shutters on the windows that I close and bolt too. Cheap PIR shed alarm as well.

I built in a custom desk using two small filing cabinets/drawers I had from the old office.

In the summer I added a vent as well to help with airflow.

About 20 months down the line I'm more than happy still and use it a couple of days a week to work from home with a laptop in dock to a bigger monitor plus mouse.

Not saying what I've done is a good guide, but it works for me. All for around £1,300, and I have a shed on the other end too which is very useful.

 

[holy85]

Sounds brilliant Tim84, any pictures?

 

[Brigadier]

Hello Tim,

can you run a phone off the cat6 as well, or it solely for the router?

 

[Tim84]

Sounds brilliant Tim84, any pictures?

I'll dig them out over the next few days as they're not on my iPad anymore...

Hello Tim,

can you run a phone off the cat6 as well, or it solely for the router?

I don't personally have a landline phone in the house or office, just use it for broadband. Technically I guess you could use one of the pairs in a Cat6 wire and put a phone plug on it? You wouldn't get voice the way I've done it as I've come off and Ethernet port on the router just for Internet connectivity.

I've got good mobile coverage anyway, but if you don't you could use voice over WiFi from your mobile (if your mobile/provider allow it) or plug in a voip phone. I used VoWiFi when my local cell went down for a couple of weeks.

 

[chappers]

A few years ago I put together a log cabin from these guys for a client, insulated electrics and plumbing think it was one of their 45mm ones from memory.
Was pretty straight forward, the biggest head scratch was sorting everything out from the huge pile of wood that arrived, there is loads of info on their website and their customer service/tech help was absolutely fantastic, when we came up against a couple of issues, they couldn't have been more helpful.