The Home Office Shed

Riffing on my piece about guest house sheds a few days back, I wanted to revisit the thought that there's a trend afoot to build outbuildings that are truly habitable and purpose-specific. But this trend's not just about living space. Not hardly. It's about working space. With so many folks working from home these days, it's not uncommon for people to run out of room in the house.

To be clear, the term working from home doesn't necessarily mean that you are working from within the confines of your home ... rather that you are spending a good bit of your days doing your business from somewhere within the perimeter of your yard. You make the rules when you're working from home. You're not under house arrest, after all.

So who would want to work in a shed?

Hey, not everyone has a spare bedroom to set up shop. A basement that floods isn't a wise place to store thousands of dollars of computer gear. Finishing a garage as office space might seem like an economical way to gain space, until you realize how much you miss the convenience of that garage space when the rain and snow start falling. The attic might seem a likely place, until you measure out how much headroom there really is ... and how much it will cost for a contractor to add a new stairway and additional HVAC capacity to your home.

A well-designed and positioned home office shed can be marvelous and cost-effective solution for home workers that have found themselves short on workspace inside their homes.

Don't let the moniker put you off. The design needn't be utilitarian, just because the structure is a cousin of the utility shed. Far from it! Economical home office space can be attractive. The fit and finish can be every bit as slick as the main house. While your home office shed's built-in countertops might not be granite and the floor tiles won't be marble, there's a happy cozy medium that falls somewhere in-between plush luxury and the starkness of s2x4s and plywood. But nothing beats exposed post and beam in my book.