Garden office

[Mydogisamassivetwat]

Anyone have any recommendations for decent garden offices that don’t cost the earth?

Dh works from home and current office is in the box bedroom, but we would like that room back.

I don’t know where to start really, just thought I’d try and get some ideas from people who alreasy have one!

we have the room, currently have an 8x10 dilapidated shed in the garden that we are getting rid of when the weather is less grotty.

Having some building work done on the house in the summer so would be a great time to do it all together.

i adore mine
what’s your budget?

I self built what you’d call a premium 5 x 3.5m ish one a couple of summers ago for a shade over 10 grand. At a glimpse that is 100mm PIR insulated all round, electrics (not plumbed as you’d need regs for habitable space), internet, composite decking, Philips smart lights, western red cedar cladding to front with steel to sides and rear, 2.7m bifold aluminium door and heating. It’s bloody great. Love it. I’ve got a futon in there with gym equipment so it’s an office, games room, gym and occasional sleep over space. I had a reasonable concrete slab there already but it wasn’t big enough so I put in new slab foundations which is easy enough to do. The same building from garden room companies is about 25-30 grand from the research I did at the time. You can get prefab ones that are lifted into place / put up in a day and then there are options such as shipping containers etc.

Sounds like you are going to pay someone to do it for you alongside your other work, so as a minimum if you want year round use you are going to need an insulated room. You can get a 4x4 ish meter unit for about 4 grand from many places, however they aren’t insulated and will be miserable in the winter regardless of how big a heater you have in there. The moisture / cold will do nothing good for your pc etc either. If your budget isn’t going to stretch to either a custom built insulated one or a prefab unit with insulation I personally wouldn’t bother.

As little as possible, I’m tight as fuck to be honest. I’ve got 15k saved to do work I want to the house, it will have to come out of that.

I honestly think Dh has his head in the clouds about one. I’d rather he fucked off to the office everyday. Anything decent is going to cost the earth.

We got a Keops one - 3x4 which came out about 8k - then electrics on top. Husband works in there and has some storage heaters.

I just don’t know if spending something like 10k on it would be worth it.

We’ve got 4 bedrooms and 3 children.

Youngest is 4.5 and will not piss off from our bed for love nor money. There is a bunk bed in 10 year old dds room, i honestly thought she would be chomping at the bit to share with her sister, but nope! My other two co slept too, but both wanted to sleep in thier own rooms just shy of 4 years.

So basically, I wanted the box room back in the hope that making her own little room would be the end of getting kicked in the kidneys all night.

But it looks like a decent garden office would take up so much of the budget, we couldn’t re jig the downstairs as we want to as well (no room for an office downstairs).

I’d recommend https://www.tuin.co.uk - built a garden office a couple of years ago. Really good and am about to order another one. Insulated the floor and roof and they are so easy to build - a bit like giant Lego - it all slots together. They are exceptionally good value

Sounds like you should save your pennies and channel towards a divorce lawyer OP!

and how much is the other work?

mine cost £16.5 but that was ALL in

It was a lot less than £10k more like £4.5k with everything done.

Could you divide any of the bedrooms (either into two bedrooms, or a bedroom + a tiny study?). A stud wall & a bit of decorating would be far cheaper than an outdoor office and you wouldn't have additional heating costs...
If you have a floorplan we may have suggestions?

what?! maybe in 1992!

https://www.tuin.co.uk/freddy-log-cabin-5-98x2-5m-untreated/

that’s not all in

that’s for an untreated timber shell

yes but a good wood stain (sikkens or osmo) and insulation isn’t £1k. We only insulated the office element.

You can choose to spend a lot but it’s warm in winter and cool in summer. It’s all easily doable for a competent diyer.

i had a heater installed (wifi controlled - important op!) plus flooring, painted walls, electricity, electrical points, lighting and its own wifi.

plus double glazed.

On top of insulation and treatment

No, there’s no way to do anything upstairs. Standard 3 bed, 1930s semi. Then the 4th bedroom is a converted from the garage that my eldest is in.

Downstairs, the plan is to take out the wall between the kichen and dining area, open up the back recoption room (take off the double doors, basically!) an close off the front sitting room. So open up the back and create a snug sitting room at the front.

(Floor plan has dining room and lounge named the other way round but I’m sure you can see what I mean).

The obvious thing to do is to extend and square off some of the back making the footprint even bigger but that’s £££ and we don’t know if we want to spend as much as that would cost.

We have an excellent builder who rebuilt the garage/utility extension for us. He’s going to quote for all levels of work and we’ll see what we can afford.

sorry 3 children

if you’re planning on staying long term, as in throughout children’s childhood and teenage years…. definitely think about a second bathroom. One bathroom with three teens…. will scar you for life Op

Cabin Living are terrific and v reasonable (3-6k for a decent sized cabin with electrics, insulation etc.) - I think a lot of people have been horribly ripped off for garden offices, the prices vary hugely for v similar products!

Yep, just a glorified garden shed

i’ll show you mine…. very outing so i’ll name change….

give me a sec