Creating a Work from Home Office from our Backyard Shed

We bought a 900 sqft, 2 bedrooms 2 bath home in September 2020. We found out that we were pregnant three weeks later. Found out we were pregnant with twins a month later. With Dad working from home, that house got really small real quick. The wife quickly designated the current home office space as a future playroom. I needed to quickly find a way to create a work from home office space.

We looked at doing some renovations on the house immediately, but the thought of juggling newborns and a construction project was enough to scare the bravest of people. We started brainstorming ideas for setting up the house that would allow a work-from-home environment and two, most likely screaming, babies all under the same roof. It just didn’t seem possible. That’s when Brooke had a brilliant idea.

“Let’s build a shed!” she said.

“Brooke, you are not putting me out in a shed to work. That doesn’t make any sense.” I responded.

I was convinced that she wanted to put me out in an un-air-conditioned, plywood-walled shed with 2×4 built in shelf as a desk. I didn’t have her vision, and she didn’t really push the subject.

Then it hit me.

A few weeks later, I was scrolling through some form of social media, and I saw someone had posted a video of a shed being converted into a living space. I shot up from the couch and ran over to Brooke.

“I figured it out! Let’s convert a shed into a little office for me in the backyard like this,” I stated as I shoved my phone in Brooke’s face.

She rolled her eyes at me and said, “Mark, this is literally what I told you we should do.”

I realized at that point that she and I had very different definitions of what a shed was. This was not a shed. I envision a sweaty, humid, plywood box of hot air with tools. I couldn’t possibly be expected to work out in that. Brooke saw the completed project, though, in her head; she just needed a visual like this video to help get through to me.

We started looking for plans and landed on just getting a prefabricated Tuff Shed. The reason for us landing on the Tuff Shed route was simple. We lived in Florida. This means a hurricane is not a question of if but of when. We wanted something that was going to be built to last and be safe during the toughest storm. The other reason was the warranty on the shed protected us from it being destroyed in a couple of years and us being out of the space. We had a local dealer help us out, and we bought the shed that worked for us.

Check out the video of our conversion project:

If you like what we did with the shed and want to copy some of our design as inspiration I’ve included some links to similar products that we used in the shed.

Phase Two of the Shed Work From Home Office

After we got the shed built and we had insulation, flooring, and airconditioning it was time to start customizing. We built an entry deck that significantly helped keep dirt out of the shed and we added some decorations like potted plants and string lights. It really tied the whole backyard together.

We have a google home system at our house and so we also got some smart outlets that let me program the lights to come on and off and allows us to turn them on and off with our voice. This allowed for the lights to automatically kick on at dusk and turn off around the time we go to bed every night (9 pm, we have twins remember).

The last thing that I wanted to work on was making sure that I had a strong internet connection. For that I decided to add a wifi mesh point in the office. As I have all google home products it was an easy choice to stick with that and get the Google Nest Wifi Mesh network point. This gives my whole lot from the home to the shed office a strong signal. I highly recommend it, it also gives me a google voice assistant/speaker in my office to play music from.

The shed came out really nice, and it is the perfect space for me to work in. I didn’t realize initially, but one advantage that has been super healthy from a work-life balance perspective is that I could actually “Leave” work. After I finish for the day, I’d leave and lock up the office. That simple act of actually locking the door and leaving my computer there is a habit block and resistance for me to “hop back on for a second.” It has allowed me to be much more present at home when I’m home. I love that simple aspect of the office shed.