When I first started working at home in 2002 I used one of our spare bedrooms as my office. At that point, my wife worked full-time and we had no kids so I really had the house to myself during the day. In that empty-house environment, there really wasn’t much to distract me from my work during the day so the issue of location didn’t seem all that important. However, after some time it became apparent that having such easy access to my office made it a little too easy to work.

Beyond my normal work day, I’d often find myself responding to an instant message, doing a “quick” email check or writing “just a few more” lines of code. When you added-up all of my brief office visits, my 8 hour work day would often become a 10+ hour work day. While this may be great for HP, it’s probably not so great for me.

Work-at-Home Tip: Those BEEPs and DINGs that Outlook and your IM client make to notify you of a new message are fine during the work day, but shut them off when you’re done for the day. There’s nothing worse than hearing the DING of Outlook during dinner and knowing that there’s something in your inbox that requires attention. Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something about the “psychic weight” of unfinished tasks that drives me crazy. Ignorance is bliss in this case.

Being so close to the office for much of the day definitely made it harder to stop working, but I suspect that most people would be able to overcome that with a little bit of discipline. For me, the issue that really got me thinking about my home office location was the birth of our son in 2004. I didn’t have the house to myself anymore — my wife and son were now home most of the day and things were suddenly a lot more distracting. It wasn’t too bad at first (those newborns tend to sleep a lot and don’t make too much noise), however, once Oscar started walking it became apparent that I was going to have to find a new place to work.

I certainly feel lucky that I was present for the first roll/word/crawl/step, but once the little guys are walking, talking and opening doors it can be a bit challenging to talk on the phone or just put your head down and get some work done. I definitely understand that working at home is a privilege and is something that I take pretty seriously. I didn’t want to be that guy whose kids you can always hear in the background during the teleconference — I always felt like that was a little disrespectful to one’s co-workers so I started looking at my options.

I should point out that we live in San Diego in a house that was built in the 1930’s so it’s a little on the ‘cozy’ side. Relocating my office to the back of the house wasn’t really gonna make any difference in a house that was only 1800 square feet to begin with. If I was going to continue working from home, it was looking like I was either going to need to add on to the house or move to the garage (neither of which were particularly attractive).

As it turns out there was another option that was immediately obvious: build a stand-alone office. Our house isn’t particularly big, but we do have a pretty good sized lot and it just so happens that there was a big chunk of it that we weren’t doing anything with. Behind our garage was a 10′ x 17′ area that one of the previous owners had gated-off and finished with a nice slab of concrete. We were using it to store junk, but it turned out to be the perfect place to put an office!

I toyed around with the idea of extending the garage or having something custom built, but after doing some research I discovered that the most cost effective way to get what I wanted was to purchase a pre-fab building. There are lots of companies that offer these sorts of things but I ended-up buying from a company called Tuff Shed that specializes in installing sheds and garages. A Tuff Shed rep came out to look at my space and give me an overview of their products. One of their most popular products apparently is the 8″ x 15″ Standard Ranch Storage Building (I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the largest structure you can put on your property in San Diego without requiring permits is 8″ by 15″). Luckily, this was the perfect size building for the space I had behind my garage.

Once I selected the basic building size and style, I was given the opportunity to select the size, style and placement of the door as well as the number, size, shape, and placement of any windows. I also got to pick the color for the building, trim and shingles. Four weeks after I placed my order, two guys showed-up with a big truck full of materials and they had my new office “installed” about 6 hours later. The four walls came pre-assembled but everything else was put together on site.

So, now I had a place to work but it wasn’t quite ready for me to move in. Since Tuff Sheds are typically used as sheds they aren’t really suitable for occupation (it would probably serve as a fine place to park your lawn mower, but isn’t someplace that I’d want to spend my days). However, after finishing the interior with insulation, drywall, carpet and paint things were starting to look downright homey.

I’ve been in my shed for over a year now and I absolutely love it. I’m just far enough away that I don’t get distracted by the daily adventures of the kids (we’ve got two now) but close enough that I don’t miss anything important. The other nice thing is that it has significantly reduced my temptation to engage in those evening/weekend work sessions. The “commute” through the back yard to the office is just enough of a barrier to keep a nice separation between work and life. If Outlook beeps and no one is around to hear it, did you really get an email?  Guess I won’t know till tomorrow.

(You can see more pics of my office here)