Back in 2010, I started working what is now called a “Hybrid” schedule. It started with working-from-home (WFH) on Fridays, then it was being in the office in the middle of the week. Then the office was looking to reclaim some office space, so I offered to just work from home all the time.
Since my 2nd apartment I’ve had a home office. As with most folks that have an extra bedroom, you throw a desk in there and get setup. As a PC gamer (though these days I play on the Xbox), I spent a lot of time at the desk playing game and maybe doing just a little bit of work.
When I first started working, we were issued desktop machines. That meant taking work home was not something that was really done. Then came laptops, that meant you could take the laptop home and work on it there.
Before the Hybrid schedule, there were sporadic times I would WFH. And having a space where I could sit and work was of course a necessary thing. I’ll be honest it wasn’t until the last 5-6 years that I feel like I work from the couch at all.
At one point my wife and I put two (matching) desks in the home office and would work from there. It was a bit too much togetherness. And once our son came, I looked at the house in Texas and tried to figure out where I would go. I looked at co-working spaces, which were in their infancy, most anything that was available was more of an “Executive Office Space” rental facility, eg expensive.
I took a look at the backyard and saw that we had a garden shed out there, a shed I had recently had a new roof and siding put on it. The shed already had power run to it, housing a couple of shop lights and an outlet or two. I put together a supply list, talked to a handyman friend of ours, and we set off on remodeling the shed.
We started ordering stuff in late November 2016, and it looks like I moved in early Feb 2017. With the shed being at the edge of the yard and the ground being what it is in TX, I didn’t want to try and trench an ethernet line out there. Which I am glad I didn’t bother with, that whole deal will be addressed later in this post. But I looked into some point-to-point gear and set about hooking up my office with some WiFi thanks to Ubiquiti. With the Internet fixed up, I was ready to work from the confines of my office, away from the dogs, the hustle and bustle of toddlers, and the occasional vacuum cleaner.
I adjusted the desk position and ended up with this layout.
That left an issue with our Michigan summer place. It has what we call the “Studio”, as the previous owner was an artist and that is what she used it for. HUGE room like 25’ x 12’. I had posted myself up in there amongst dog stuff, and a bunch of yarn. But much like the TX house, the working conditions were not great. In my memory the real issue came that my son had started walking and talking and would like to knock on the door, as he knew I was in there. So that meant I needed an office space when we were up in Michigan as well. But we didn’t have a garden shed to remodel.
I started off by looking at shed kits, but building one by myself was going to be too much work. I looked at the various sheds that were from HomeDepot or even the ones you might see on the side of the road, but all of those would still need retrofitting. But then I saw that a local Bellaire company, Woodmasters, was building custom sheds. They were doing vinyl siding and metal roofs for a really great price, like a 10x12 for around $2,000 (circa 2017).
I talked to them about what I wanted, being french doors, higher ceiling, a finished interior, and electrical. They were accomodating and even had an electrical company that could do the wiring, and also trench the electrical the 150ft back from the garage to the shed.
The new shed is a bit different, a little smaller, but feels bigger at times. The ceiling is higher, and the interior is an unfinished wood, but it has a reddish hue to it.
The shed is insulated, but to be honest it could have been a little better insulated, the metal roof really heats up in the summer. The Texas office, has an attic built-in and that really does keep it cooler throughout the day along with having a shingled roof.
Regardless, it is where I do my work, most of the time, other times I do it on the couch.