Home DIY

The house we're hoping to complete on has this garden room/shed - I'd like to turn it into a home office. Would this be a worthwhile venture or should I save time/effort and down the line replace with a purpose built home office? I know a few people on here have experience of this so thought I'd ask.

2 Attachments

@Tenderloin - link to sales thread mate...!

It's a standard CNC tongue and groove single skin "log cabin" there should be a small (15mm PIR board is the norm IIRC) amount of insulation in the roof and maybe some in the floor depending on the installer. The wood the walls are constructed from does have a insulative value, but not much. All of this means that while it will perform better in terms of being too cold in the winter / too hot in the summer than a standard shed you will still feel it.

The normal way to sort this in say a single skin brick building would be to batten out the wall and put plasterboard on it, filling the cavity created with insulation. Unfortunately you cannot do that with this building as the "logs" it's made from will expand and contract with changes in humidity and temperature, the battens would fight this and eventually it will fall off or damage the structure of the building.

Basically you have two options deal with it as is (you have power and heating after all). Or tear it down and start again. If it helps I used to do contracting work for a company who sold and built these things (if they were too busy or had a particularly complex job on) their biggest seller was units that size for home office use and the vast majority of customers loved them.

Are those really the same shed or are does it have two?

Seems like a no-brainier to try it out as is. All you need is a desk and a fan now that summer is on the way.

Maybe a chair if you’re feeling decadent.

Pretty sure it's the same - the first pic was from before decking was installed.

Ok, thanks. I was thinking as there's power in there, to use as is for now and then probably go purpose built down the line (especially if home working continues to be prevalent. But if there had been an option which would make use of this shell longer term thought I'd consider it. Thanks for the advice. Do you mean that the above (or similar) was their biggest seller and used as home office?

Decadence is my middle name.

Best place to order power tools from that has decent customer service? Need to buy a drill for general DIY (Makita probs).

Got mine here, was free next day delivery.

Perfect

Does a type of lock exist that will always lock when when closed and then require key again to open? Looking to replace this one on the security gate on the front door, as a lot of housemates are too lazy to keep it locked.

1 Attachment

I've not seen anything that 'upgrades' bolts to work like a latch. Keyless entry is an option perhaps? Pin codes, fobs, etc. You could go down the smart lock route, or with an electromagnetic system? Spenny.

The normal way to sort this in say a single skin brick building would be to batten out the wall and put plasterboard on it, filling the cavity created with insulation. Unfortunately you cannot do that with this building as the "logs" it's made from will expand and contract with changes in humidity and temperature, the battens would fight this and eventually it will fall off or damage the structure of the building.

Oof, does this mean the craptacular shed-room-thing in the couple of images in my post above is going to pull itself apart? In my ignorance and without being able to find a guide to a similar project, I screwed extra studs between the battens of the shed carcass, packed in insulation and screwed on plasterboard. This was three summers ago. How many more years do I get from it before it implodes?

I need to replace the hastily knocked together solid slab door ASAP and was wondering if it will be possible to build in a properly squared frame then put in a pre-hung door of some sort- or is that just idiocy on top of idiocy?

@hugo7 that £750 was pushed up by getting materials specific to trying to soundproof the space (a few square metres of acoustic underlay was north of a hundred quid) and adding things like carpet and skirting so I'm sure you could do similar for c. £500 - though you may not want to in light of the above!

light of the above

My understanding was that was because the one Tenderloin posted doesn't have batons/a frame that creates the voids. Surely ours are frames with cladding, whereas the log cabin derives its structural strength from the walls.

Would love to know if I've got that wrong.

Interested to see what those Makita MT series tools are like. I'm half tempted, but know deep down that I've always regretted buying cheap tools. Yet on the flip side, I often sing Evolution tools' praises. Can someone else just buy all of them and figure out if they're shit, please.

Fence building is fucking hard.
Far more difficult than I'd anticipated.
Just about there. Not too bad for a first attempt.

1 Attachment

Nope you should be alright as yours is a traditional shed construction. I.E it's constructed as a frame that is then clad. The one that @Tenderloin is thinking of converting to a home office is a log cabin, so the structure is formed, not by a frame, but by interlocking CNC milled tongue and groove logs that form the structure like a traditional frontier log cabin.

You'd need a latch lock, keyed both sides. Something like this.

https://www.amazon.com/Double-Keyed-Gate-Latch-Lock/dp/B07HDF9R4R

However to find one that you could directly swap for that deadbolt could be difficult. You may well need a new lockcase fabricated and welded back into the gate.

To make sure the gate is closed after exit I'd put a overhead door closer on it (the things you have on firedoors) as well.

Go and talk to a local locksmith.

Building a deck... Would people use joist hangers for the sub frame or screw/nail directly? Timber is 145x45 c24 and sat on concrete blocks with rubber feet to lift away from water.
When I built the sub frame for my shower I had issues with my circular saw not cutting ends at exactly 90°, so screwing pulled things out of true, whereas hangers (with nails) gave some adjustment.

We just built a fairly substantial deck (about 100sqm) we made ours out of 4x4 oak posts and then 6x2 treated timber on top, we used galvanised coach bolts to connect the posts to the rails and then a combination of 100mm and 150mm coated timberlock screws to connect the 6x2 together where needed. I hate cutting 90 degrees with a circular saw, surely time to invest in a cheap chop saw?! Can't go wrong with the Aldi or Lidl one for £100...

Caulking/silicone-ing the junction between skirting and floor has been a bit of a disaster...

Both the floors and walls are not remotely straight, hence trying to fill the gaps. The skirting-wall junction isn't so bad, but even having used masking tape - the floor's undulations, voids behind where it meets the wall, and likely lack of good technique on my part - means it's come out really rough.

Most of the walls of this room (just the one room done so far) will be covered by furniture, so not the end of the world - but all ears if anyone can see something obvious I've missed or if there's a tricky to sort this kind of thing out (stanley knife to cut away the bits that stick out, and another quick , thin layer of caulk to try and make it more uniform?)

1 Attachment

Got you, thanks! Really appreciate the explanation.

Can I be cheeky and ask what you think is my best bet for replacing the door to my shed (was meant to be a temporary fix, has now been in place for three years) with something reasonably sturdy that will fit square and will provide some degree of acoustic barrier? I wondered about even a upvc unit fitted into a frame built into the opening but the available height is less than any standard door. Or just a more solid and square version of what I already have?
As you can see I could scarcely be more clueless with all this stuff, but finance and temperament combined tend to see me trying to bodge these things.

May help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DI4hfHM_Hg