Let’s keep this office official
How much of an office is your home office going to be? The cost, in terms of hard cash and carbon footprint, will be far lower if you manage to build your office space into your home right from the start, instead of adding an extension or garden office l
If your home office is for paying bills, tracking the kids’ dental appointments or writing a letter to the editor of the Times (Oban or Piping, never London) then fine, on you go. But if it is going to be where you earn the substantive part of your income then be very aware. This room has to be right first time. It has to hit-the-ground-running because you need to be hard at work bringing in the cash to help fill up that house-sized hole in your family savings. Been there, done that and now earning a living in it. Think of the number of plug, phone and usb points you will need and treble it. Until some secret government project recovers a new form of power storage from a crashed UFO, the batteries here on planet earth will need charging all the time and then some. At last half-a-dozen devices and batteries will be plugged into the mains at any given time, and that is only for the kit you need now. Add you can never have too much storage to the dictum that you can never be too rich or too thin. Whoever said this in a cloud storage and paperless world lied. However much storage space you think you need, go ahead and double it. Just as they say dress for the job you want not the one you have, have an office for the business you want to create; it will include clients, collaborators and suppliers visiting you. If possible, build in the space for coffee/tea making and room for an extra couple of chairs; if you can add or keep a downstairs WC for work use, and threaten the family with vile retribution if they mess it up, then even better. There is a limbo land when your business is growing, but not enough yet to justify the expense of commercial office space; when your business is not best served by a client meeting your cat in the kitchen while you brew-up or they go to the bathroom amidst your teenagers’ acne remedies and your youngest’s Peppa Pig
Once you hit the big(ger) time and move out then your family has an extra room: win-win. Your garden should also reflect your ambitions with a hard area able to accommodate more than the average family collection of cars. We’re not talking NCP here but a flexibility built into the design from the start. And the golden rule: unless you are manufacturing, product-testing or selling them, your office is no place for an ironing board, large sacks of petfood or skis. Woe betide anyone who thinks it is.