I'm building a home office in the backyard. Any advice?

Has anyone done something like this before?

We’re doing a few renovation projects at home this year. Actually, we’re paying people to do most of the work. First the bathroom. Then the kitchen. And next, a home office in the backyard. That’s the one I’m really looking forward to.

Once construction starts, I’m planning to blog about the experience on Envato Notes. In the meantime, maybe you could give me some advice!

I currently work, relax and sleep in the same room. Not a good combination, and it can get a bit depressing – though I get out of the office fairly often. A separate home office is exactly what I need for a bit of separation between work and everything else.

Well, I’ve been planning this home office for quite a few months, and finally have the basic construction of the building organised. We were originally going to use wood, but for cost reasons have decided to build a big Colorbond steel shed on a concrete slab. It will be a large 9×4 metre building, with three 3×4 rooms – one of them being my office.

Has anyone have experience building this type of structure? Most of the work will be done by professionals, so I don’t need that sort of advice. But once it’s build I have a few questions, and feel free to throw in any extra advice or opinions.

1. I live in Queensland, which is hot. I know I’ll need an air conditioner. Should I also line the walls? Any idea of the best way to do that? What are the best options for insulation to keep the heat out and the cold in? (And vice versa for the three days it gets cold each year.)

2. I’m a muso, and so are some of my kids. I’m not currently doing a heap of home recording/production, but I’m planning to. (Eventually.) I imagine Colorbond walls won’t make the best recording environment and lining the walls would also help with soundproofing and acoustic treatment. Is it even possible to turn a tin shed into a nice place to record?

3. The floors will be cement. Any suggestions for an effective but inexpensive floor covering?

4. I’ll need to get electricians to send power over to the building (and I’ll get them to do a data cable as well). Have you learned anything about this the hard way that I can get right the first time?

I’ll stop there for now. I’ll eventually be thinking about how to set up my gear inside the office too, so feel free to throw your suggestions my way. We’re getting council permits for the building now, and work will probably commence in January.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Adrian

Looing forward to see the blog posts!
I had a dream to made an office with fully transparent glass, including the roof, so I can see the rain drops all the way down
A light wood floor and some big trees outside close to the glass walls, hiding a bit the sun light.
That would be really amazing haha.

Hi Adrian, yep done exactly the same when we built a place in Dayboro.

My advice, go extra thick on the slab. Cream coorbond walls Galv colour roof. Plenty of whirlbirds

Put an ac in, happy to quote. I run small ac business. Allow 2.5kw for every 16sqm area, but must insulate your walls. And roof space.

Also fit air vents in the colorbond walls at low level to allow cavity to breathe, or walls will sweat.

Obviously, orientation of windows is vital, if you can extend the eave / soffitt on the main window / sun wall do so.

Use sound proof quality quilted batts for insulation, will also reduce noise of rain.

Ste

Hi – we’ve just done exactly this! It was finished a week ago, we finished painting the interior a couple of days ago and moved in yesterday.

I can’t give you any specifics although the company site drills into a lot of detail about the insulation they use http://www.oecogardenrooms.co.uk/pages/thermal-insulation.html

We have got acoustic insulation and when the doors are closed, we’ve had music playing full blast through a sub-woofer the size of a large family pet and you can barely hear a thing outside.

For flooring we jsut slapped down some decent underlay and then laminate on top. All the budget had gone on the build so nothing left for proper wood floors!

Electricity is the bitch. We had to come off a spur form the main house which meant digging 2 separate trenches through the garden. One for the data cables and one for the main electricity. Keep the two separate and at least a foot apart to prevent interference.

I can get much more in depth answers to any of your questions once I’ve quizzed my colleague in whose garden this sits and put in most of the effort sourcing the company and doing the details.

J

For the electrics and data.

Get a sparky with trencher, to put cables in underground. Run the cables in the orange heavy duty conduit, but dont put data cable in same conduit.

Get a small sub board fitted inside the shed, with safety trip switch on, and if possible voltage control, to handle peak power surges etc.

From an accoustic point of view, carpet is better for the floor

SportTipsWorld said
From an accoustic point of view, carpet is better for the floor

Have to agree with this 5000%. Laminate looks more “officey” and is easier to clean though. Carpet on the other hand is better for cold feet and it doesn’t crack and screech at every step when temperature differences occur.

We decided against carpet for purely that reason – cleaning!

contrastblack said

SportTipsWorld said
From an accoustic point of view, carpet is better for the floor

Have to agree with this 5000%. Laminate looks more “officey” and is easier to clean though. Carpet on the other hand is better for cold feet and it doesn’t crack and screech at every step when temperature differences occur.

Especially in qld. Im not up on accoustics, you can get accoustic underlay for floating floors. I actually had our concrete polished in office areas. Im not a great lover of carpet.

But minimise dust using epoxy finish, or expsed aggregate. And throw down a thick rug, for comfort and i presume reduce sound reflection.

kops said
We decided against carpet for purely that reason – cleaning!

We built two sheds, both extra high, because they were to be used for offices, higher ceilings easier to manage heat.

Prior to ac being fitted, we recorded temps internally, in bare shed, in excess of fifty degrees c.

SportTipsWorld said

kops said
We decided against carpet for purely that reason – cleaning!

We built two sheds, both extra high, because they were to be used for offices, higher ceilings easier to manage heat.

Prior to ac being fitted, we recorded temps internally, in bare shed, in excess of fifty degrees c.

Ach you lucky bugger you live in a land with lots of sunshine (and man-sized spiders :S) whereas we are in the cold and damp UK. Before the heaters went in we were working in winter coats and hats. Ever tried operating a small laptop mouse with skiing gloves on?