Anyone got a garden office recently?

[Seainasive]

I would love to hear your experience of having a garden office built. I’m so sick of working from my kitchen and I don’t think my employer is planning on reopening our offices any time soon.

If you’ve had one built, do you love it? What size did you go for? How long did it take? Any issues with planning consent? Anything I should think about before spending a significant amount of money?

Thanks!

Not exactly a garden office but I am also contemplating converting the garage for the same reasons you mentioned above! Need planning permission for this first so it will be a while before I can have a separate office space...

We are in the middle of building a summerhouse at the moment. It is 20ft x 12ft. We are building it from scratch. My FIL is amazing at carpentry so he has worked out the quantities of materials for us. It has saved us thousands by doing it ourselves. My BIL is an electrician so he will be installing the lights and sockets for us.

So far, it has taken 5 days and the ground works are done, the base, the back and sides are up. The front skeleton is up. The doors, windows and panelling are going on tomorrow, as well as the roof supports.
Then the roof will be done and the floorboards. It is really hard work.

If you are doing it out of timber, shop around. The prices for materials are wide ranging. There was a delay for some of the timbers so make sure you have everything before you start and keep checking your measurements. We got held up waiting for some materials to be delivered.

That is impressive. I definitely won’t be building my own, I know the limits of my skills!

I think I’ll be looking at something made out of insulated panels, prefabricated off site. Prices do seem to vary wildly so will have to do more research

I had one made to fit my garden. 10x9m fully insulated, plaster boarded with electricity and flooring etc with it’s own patio.
I went for good quality timber as preferred the look and wood-look upvc doors and windows. Was about £10k all in.

If you’re prepared to compromise on the look/window colours etc you could prob do it for £5-6k

I run my whole business from a wooden summerhouse. It's about 12ft x 8ft and I've been working in it for the last 6 years. We put slabs down as a base and we built it in an afternoon. My husband ran a cable from the house for power and I plugged in a WiFi extender.
Perfect! Does exactly what I needed!
I think the summerhouse cost just under £1000. About £895 ish?

Thanks that’s really interesting. Does it have insulation?

We have a log cabin 3x4m which is big enough for 2 desks and a small sofa. Small enough not to need planning. It was about £6000 including the base and installation. I painted it an aspirational dark grey myself. This is the sort with 44mm log walls, so no plasterboard, but the floor and ceiling are insulated and boarded. IIRC they poured the base then a week later brought the cabin and built it in a day.

It has electric and ethernet; needs a good heater in winter but is such a useful space. Its not gold plated/cedar clad but for us it hits the right spot between sturdy enough to be useable and cheaper than a house extension.