Creating a tiny office space in your backyard For those dreaming of a better place to WFH
With COVID-19 making working from home the new normal, and as people are realizing that this situation might go on for the foreseeable future, finding enough space and quiet to concentrate and get your work done has become a priority. If setting up your office at the kitchen table isn’t cutting it, and if you have the outdoor space, you might want to consider a backyard office shed.
Tiny house builders and garden shed manufacturers across the country are pivoting to create home office structures that range from compact, prefabricated deluxe sheds to more elaborate custom designs. And business is booming.
“A soon as the quarantine and having to work from home started, the requests for our sheds doubled,” said Brennan Deitsch, online marketing manager for Heartland Sheds, which has a branch in Glendale Heights, Illinois. “A lot of people never really had their home set up as an office, so having a quiet place allows them to make the most of the work-from-home lifestyle,” he said.
To make the humble shed more appealing as an office, numerous design options are now available, ranging from classic cottages to styles that mimic the modernist tiny house designs that have become popular in recent years. Companies are also designing the structures to be more functional, adding features like additional operable windows and solar panels for power.
Elgin, Illinois, tiny house builder Bob Clarizio said that his company Bantam Built is getting up to 85 requests a week for backyard offices. “You have this demographic of people that are working from home and they’re getting the sense that there’s a chance that this is going to become a permanent lifestyle for them, which is stressful in itself,” he said. “For a lot of people, they feel like it’s a crisis — they don’t have the space, and they don’t want to spend all of the money to remodel their house with a room addition. That’s why I think we’re seeing so much of this.”
If you are considering a backyard office shed, the need and cost for a building permit varies depending on your location, the size of the structure, and amenities that you may want.