Home Office – Revisited
After having my home office featured on Lifehacker this morning, I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback about my set-up. I’ve been following the comments left on LH as well as Flickr and my own blog and wanted to post a quick entry to address some of the common questions:
- In the city of San Diego you need a building permit for any structure that exceeds 120 square feet in area. Not surprisingly, one of the best-selling sheds is the 8×15 foot model (that’s exactly 120 square feet).
- The shed itself cost about $3800. Included in that cost were 3 windows, a steel door and delivery/installation. I spent another $2000 to have the shed insulated, dry-walled, painted and carpeted. I was able to get a remnant piece of carpet that fit perfectly so I saved a lot of money there.
- With two powerful computers running in here 24/7 I really don’t have to worry about heating the office in the winter (this is San Diego after all). However, it can get pretty warm in the summer. I installed a through-the-wall air conditioner and it does a great job. It doesn’t take much A/C to keep 120 square feet cool. If I’d planned ahead better I could have instructed the shed company to cut-in the necessary hole for me ahead of time. Since the idea for the A/C didn’t occur to me until after the shed had been installed, I ended-up cutting the hole myself prior to the dry-wall work. I could have gone with a window A/C unit, but I didn’t want to give up any of my windows.
- One area where I was able to save a lot of money was by doing all of the wiring myself. After the shed was installed, I went in and ran all the necessary cables for AC power, telephone, cable TV and ethernet. I made sure that there was power near the air conditioner and in the ceiling for my track lighting. I think that I ended-up with two separate AC circuits — one just for the air conditioner and one for everything else. Everything connects back to the house via a conduit that is running through the back yard (this part involved a long, 18 inch deep trench connecting the house to the office).
- For the telephone, cable and ethernet I ran one line for each from the house and terminated them in a small media panel (see below) that I installed in the wall. From there, I ran cables to all of the points in the office where I thought I might want to plug stuff in.
- I knew I was going to install some sort of speaker system in the office, so I also ran speaker wire in the walls to the four corners of the office and terminated them with a nice banana-plug style wall plate in the corner of the office.
Update: One topic that I forgot to address was ’security’ — I’ve gotten a couple questions about this already. Given that I’ve got a fair amount of computer equipment in the shed, security was something that I thought a lot about. I suppose it wouldn’t be wise of me to go into too much detail, but I will say that our house already has a pretty nice alarm system so at the same time I was running the wire for the ethernet and telephone I ran the necessary wire to hook the shed up to the alarm system in the house. Beyond that, I just did simple things like selecting the steel door option for the shed and installing a motion-sensing flood light above the door. I also installed a keypad-based deadbolt so I don’t have to carry any keys around (or worry about losing them).
16 Responses to “Home Office – Revisited”
Your article has really sparked my interest in doing something similar Great job. Question about your network wiring: I’m assuming that you probably have cable broadband, located the cable modem in your house and then ran a single ethernet line out to your office to your Netgear router (looks like the same one I have). Where did you get the wiring boards and box that you used to tie everything together in the wall (that’s pretty slick). Thanks!
@Michael, the white Netgear box you see in the picture is just a 4-port switch that I’m using to split the single ethernet line that I have running from the house. The cable modem and router are housed in a similar panel located in the house (since we have a computer and some other networked devices in the house, the router needs to live there instead of in the office).
The box that’s mounted into the wall and the wiring boards are all part of Leviton’s Structured Media Center line:
http://www.leviton.com/OA_HTML/ibeCCtpSctDspRte.jsp?section=15191&minisite=10027
If you have one in your area, Home Depot typically carries a lot of the Leviton stuff.
Looks great, although I think I’d miss having running water. About the only thing I’d add for sure, though, is a ceiling fan. I’m not a fan of air-conditioned air blowing all the time and it gets hot here in TX. Ceiling fans make all the difference.
Ah, I’ll be in pretty much the same situation (TiVos, laptops, etc. still in the house). Thanks for the info and the inspiration to kick start my project!
Awesome project. Great job of planning out all the wiring and tying it all together in the Leviton box. Clean, functional, and cool (literally and figuratively!). The one initial concern regards security. Without knowing what area of SD you’re in, are you concerned at all about having all that nice gear residing in a detached structure? I wouldn’t begin to know what type of security to recommend or suggest; just curious to know if you accounted for it, think about it, etc. Regardless, kudos on a man cave many of us envy a great deal!
@JohnB: Great question, I meant to include that in my post originally. I’ve added an update to the end of the article that addresses some of the security concerns.
Wow. I should really look into doing something like this. Thanks again for the details!! It’s much appreciated, and a great inspiration.
Hey B,
Great job on the whole project. If you code in a similar manner your company must be very happy. Question for you…not sure if this has been addressed, where did you get the original shed and what brand is it?
thx for sharing!
This is really amazing – everything is pretty much just what I want in my upcoming home office. The biggest question I have for you though is about your desk. Where’d you find it? I can’t find anything similar anywhere (and you managed to find the exact type of desk that I want).
Again, great job!
@Larry: I ordered the shed through my local Tuff Shed dealer. I called them up and they sent a sales guy out to help me pick the right size/style and go over the various door/window/paint options that were available. I was very happy with the whole experience.
@Mark: My desk came from a store here in San Diego called Plummers. I used to live in Northern California and I know that they had the same store up there, but it was called Scandanavian Designs. It looks like both of these stores have locations throughout California and a few locations in Colorado and Nevada. My desk in particular was assembled from their Network Office line of modular desk components. They have something like 30 different pieces that you can choose from to build the perfect desk for your space.
Darling, I’m in the Shed! — Skillett.com - July 18th, 2008
[...] After seeing this at LifeHacker I’ve got some real plans! Although I have an office in the house these days, Brian DeHamer’s home/shed office is fantastic! Particularly with his “Upgrades“. [...]
Great set up. I was wondering the manufacturer of the monitor stand for the dual monitors that looks like it folds flat against the wall. I have been looking for something similar for a while now.
@Daniel: The monitor mount is the Ergotron 200 Series.
You did a great job with your Man Shed Office. It inspired me to return to my own manturary in my back yard. Yes, get the christmas decorations back in the garage where they belong. It’s partially finished – just needs a couch and 42″ on the wall…
Hey Brian. This is an awesome idea and since I found out about it, it’s all I can think about. I have a 3bdrm house and 2 kids so my office is now the kitchen table. This idea is perfect and I am hoping the do the same thing.
I did have a question though. How tall is the shed? It looks to me to be 7-8 feet tall.
Thanks for sharing this with us.
@Justin, the shed is 8′ 4″ at the shortest point and probably close to 10′ at the peak. If you go to the Tuff Shed website and look for the PRO Tall Ranch, that’s the one that I’ve got.
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