Man shed - advice

[b0redom]

Hi All,
The time has finally come when b0redom Jnr #3 needs his own bedroom, so my home office is being sacrificed.

I'm considering getting a log cabin in the back garden. I work from home fairly regularly - in my last role it was 95% of the time. I would guestimate that the space I have is about 7ft deep x 30 ft wide.

• It must be well enough insulated that I can work in there in the winter and the summer.
• It must be secure enough that I won't be panicking about leaving a couple of thousand quids worth of hardware in there overnight
• It must last at least 10 years.
• It must be able to be wired for power and network (cat 5e) - I have no problem with digging up a chunk of garden to trunk wiring down to it

Does anyone have any experience with stuff like this? I'm not proposing building it myself (in fact I definitely won't as I have no DIY skills at all), and I don't have a budget in mind really.

[stevie lee]

how close are your neighbours? get on well with them? they'll have to look at it more than you, because you'll be in it.

7ft deep doesn't sound very much if your going to be working in there, especially if you make a log cabin, you'll with 6ft or less, barely enough room to spin around on your chair.

measure it up and see what space you have in the garden, and what planning permission will allow you to cover with outbuildings. then see whether your office stuff will actually fit. may have to do some jiggery-pokery with planning software like http://planner.roomsketcher.com

also. http://forums.hexus.net/home-garden-...n-society.html more sheds in there. just for ideas. but they're more sheddy sheds not offices
dad built it all himself (the shed in the link) took a good few months. no idea on the cost, it was 30 years ago. its not very warmt hough, uninsulated roof, and only single pane windows.

[peterb]

Friend of mine built one himself (bigger than yours) fully insulated floor, walls and ceiling, and cost him around £10,000 in materials and about 2 months of time. Walls were building ply, with 80mm insulation, and then dry lined. External finish was ship lap cedar planks. Lots of semi-permeable membranes, suspended floor. Estimated cost to have it built about £50k.

Yours would be cheaper, and depends on how good a job you want done. Lots of heat loss through the floor, so a suspended floor with the whole thing supported on brick pillars would help. Check planning regs carefully if you are building near a boundary.

[RobbieRoy]

I've looked into log cabins too - mainly as somewhere to put my daughter as she's outgrown the house (!). My Dad also put one up to use as a painting studio in his garden.

The best value one I found was a 4m x 3m Waltons Retreat Traditional Log Cabin which will cost £1600 inc VAT plus any additions such as extra insulation or double glazing. I'm planning to get a basic package and then augment it myself when I build it.

The biggest headache, leaving positioning to one side, is making sure you put something like this together very carefully because if anything is just a little bit out then the natural expansion and contraction of the wood will exaggerate the gaps over time!

[Spreadie]

I think anything under 15 square metres, single story, won't require planning consent.

Even a fairly simple brick/block structure will come in at £5,000 to £8,000 by the time you've cabled and insulated it. The double skinned wooden shed/summer houses are much better value, but you'll probably still need to put a concrete pad down for it, so factor in an additional £400-£500 for a couple of cubic metres of RMX and sub-base.