Dwellito Mini Office

I did the same[1] Great relief from work. Its worth it s weight in gold as I have a separate building to commute to in the morning. My costs £2,497. As I wanted a bigger shed split into two parts. With double insinuation and lots of power outlets. Plus a big (MDF) desk.

[1] - https://www.barwap.com/projects/shedshedshed/finished-shed/

Did you build the shed entirely from your own design? Or did you find some useful resource/plans that helped you know what to buy and do? Seems like an interesting project, but I don't even know where I'd get started with something like that.

Couldn’t agree more on the idea of woodworking as stress reliever. I am hooked with it, sometimes I got physically tired by working in the garage, but mentally I felt every minute is a treat.

BTW, awesome builds of the shed and side table!

Looks great!

"It's hard to describe the primal feeling I get when I'm inside this shelter I built with my own hands. For all the back breaking work of it and all of its mistakes the feeling of satisfaction is immense."

Totally get it. The making (and using) tangible things vs. abstract coding outcomes is quite a different experience.

> I realize the irony in doing more work to relax from work

I love work. Love it. I'd likely do 20-80 hours of work a week (it'd probably vary a ton week by week) even if I didn't need to have a job for income. Not as an employee, might not even manage to make money off any of it though I'd probably try sometimes, but it'd still be work.

I don't much like doing the same kind of work 40ish hours a week, week after week after week. Kinda hate that, actually. So I think doing "more work" to relax from work makes perfect sense. Work of a sort that I, in the moment, want to do is relaxing.

Well done sir! That is a smart looking shed. I love the split doors. Is it setting on a pad or pier blocks?

Awesome work. Thanks for sharing. I have a friend who is a university professor. He works as a carpentry laborer some during the week (hot sweaty hard manual work) and says that the satisfaction he gets from helping build a deck or porch is immense and helps him do better research at the university.

The small table looks fantastic! I wish my carpentry skills were anywhere near that. How did you learn?

Awesome job mate! What about tools? how much did it cost to acrew all the tools needed to cut/etc.? And what tools does one need to get started?

That door is beautifully done.

Is it still bikeshedding if you're actually making a shed?

There’s a rumor some company in SV, some time around the new millennium, was looking for a routing/router expert. I have no idea how the interview proceeded, probably done by a non SME, anyhow, they ended up hiring a guy who really knew routers, except the ones to work on wood. I think they kept him and he learned on the job...

I was looking for a hobby that, for once, did not involve sitting at a monitor and keyboard. So I decided to build a sailboat. Chesapeake Light Crafts sells kits. Basically, like a wooden model except 1) it's full-size, and 2) you are going to actually put your body in it and hopefully not drown. It's all thin plywood, which you assemble with wire (temporarily) and then epoxy. And sanding. Lots of sanding.

I have zero wood-working experience, so I went with the kit, providing pre-cut pieces, as opposed to buying plans and doing everything myself.

It's been slow of late, because my work area has been too cold for epoxy. I've been documenting my progress here: http://geophile.com/boat. (Can you tell I'm a backend developer?)

About that getting away from a keyboard thing: Funny how that worked out. As a complete newbie, I am very reliant on their excellent support people (phone, email, forum). At one point, I ran into a problem in which the parts didn't seem to line up with the manual. As it turned out, I had the 2.1 parts with the 2.0 manual. So they sent me the updated manual. This weird interlude was much closer to a software experience than I could have imagined.

I had the same feeling. I'd been working on building software for so long that I wanted to build something with my hands. But I ended up building a whole house instead. It probably wasn't a good idea in retrospect to be so ambitious, but it turned out pretty cool: https://parkcitygreenhome.tumblr.com/

I ended up doing about 60% of the actual labor on a 7000 square foot house by myself with one laborer as an assistant. I did most of the foundation, framing, finish carpentry, flooring, stone masonry, siding, and electrical work myself.

Where do you buy wood? I cannot find quality wood. Basically have to go to local box store and sort through for hours.

You might enjoy the book (or Audiobook) of Michael Pollan’s “A Place of My Own”, wherein he builds a writing shed with the help of a handyman and some plans from an architect. It was really enjoyable — one of those stories you can sink into and not want it to end.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13838.A_Place_of_My_Own

Same! I built one in my backyard a couple of months ago, and it was one of the most gratifying things I've ever done! I highly recommend it to anyone if you're willing to put in some hard work. Pics https://imgur.com/a/11ECQWK

If you look at the hero image just on its own, it looks like a joke from a blackmirror episode:

https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5bc925f2e2b045600ce997a5/5e8...

> but they still have to sleep in a crate because otherwise they suffer from anxiety.

Do you sleep on the kitchen floor when it strikes your fancy, or do you sleep in a bed? You may notice that sleeping on the kitchen floor never does strike your fancy, which is instructive. Would you rest well in other random locations in your house?

My point is, wanting to sleep in the crate isn't modern canine neuroticism, it's just normal mammalian behavior. We like to sleep somewhere secure and comfy, and we like for it to be consistent.

We built a garden shed for my wife many years back. It started as a wood shed kit from Home Depot, then we re-designed some of the walls to put in some windows and French doors. We put a skylight in the roof, insulated it all, and put up chipboard for walls after I wired it for electricity. Some cupboards/counters from the local building recycling store, and the result is a nice space.

It was fairly straightforward, a lot of fun, and extremely useful.

Nope. I was looking at that thing thinking I could knock that out in a weekend, with the most expensive thing being materials. (the wood/drywall version anyway)

It's a shed, but it's a fairly expensive shed.

Preparing the ground isn't mentioned. If you've never tried to make a chunk of ground perfectly level and compacted so that your shed won't sink and tilt... you won't get it right by yourself. Not the first time, anyway.

Its a business expense.

No, the prices are indeed absurd.

I went top of the line and got mine up to $25K USD! Why are you skimping on your human tank?

I can almost see a more traditional tech company buying a bunch of those for their workers in the current climate, even at such a ridiculous markup, just to guarantee a "standard" workspace.

Depends. I don't know which glass they are using but I did some back of the napkin calculations for a project I was dreaming of that had some "glass" and it would cost $8-9k just for the glass alone. It was not that much glass. Probably a bit more than this cube.

That's if you are looking for some premium glass that won't shutter into a thousand pieces and hurt you. Same for steel, aluminum, high quality wood, etc...

So yes, it can be very expensive. A cheap wooden dwelling can be pretty cheap though.

Actually the $31 basic power cord seems the most absurd to me.

Couldn't just make that $0 with a $9k purchase?

Maybe it's a really thick and really long power cord?

wow!, Internet is still there...

Huh. Looks like that same company created a few other buildings but the plans have since vanished from the internet. Good find on that one!

Is there some context to who designed this and why? That framing doesn't look like anything a carpenter would produce and I'm 99% sure it wouldn't be code compliant in Oregon at least.

> Surprisingly very expensive too (9K+). But they sell sheds too that are 2K- so I'm not sure what the benefits are?

At a glance, better looks and insulated exterior doors like you'd have as an exterior door on a house, rather than thin shed doors that aren't designed for temperature control at all. Probably the windows are better, too. Hard to tell what else. Dunno what about it justifies that much higher a price but better doors & windows, wall insulation, some kind of interior wall cladding rather than just exposed studs, better sealing like you'd have on a house (guessing on the last three, see no evidence of it) and you could get up around a couple grand more on the materials cost.

The Costco one is "installed". I can't tell if it's insulated, but it looks like it -- and that along with properly sealed doors/windows (like you'd have in your house), finished interior walls, electrical/lights (?) are a big difference from what you get with a $2000 shed intended for storing your lawnmower.

Another good distinction is Dwellito says "delivered to your front door". I don't know about you, but for me that would be.. quite inconvenient. Getting an assembled 10x10 (? not sure exterior size) shed into my backyard would involve either disassembling a large part of a shared fence (which is 50% my neighbour's), or using a fairly large crane to lift it completely over the house.

It looks like all the ones in the $1-3k range are unfinished to some degree. You'd need to get electrical wiring, insulation, drywall and flooring. It gives you a few different options for exteriors and space to buy one and more customization options, you're going to need to put in some manual labor somewhere along the lines so the question becomes: is it better to spend ~$10k for a fully finished product, $1-3k + parts & labor for a prefab or hire someone to build the whole thing from scratch? I don't know what it would cost to hire a contractor to make something like this, but these pre-made options give you a good idea of where you might want to draw the line on pricing.

This is so cool! Erik, would you mind posting some more pictures of your container office? It looks very Ex Machina like from the picture and I'd love to see more and maybe even learn how you did what you did with it if possible.

A buddy of mine built his house and office out of shipping containers. Really cool project, I wish I had some pictures of it. I love seeing stuff like this repurposed.

That's fantastic. It's almost like a game mechanic, where batteries can be charged by a device, but also power the same device.

I think this is the direction we are heading. Solar panels (or other form of local generation), sending energy to any connected storage devices (an EV, this power station), and then later on sent to other devices that might need it.

I have that thing and it's got a few nitpicks.

The non-perfect sine wave means I'm afraid to plug anything important into it (say, a laptop). It drains faster than I thought it would (I think its efficiency isn't very good). I've got the 6ah batteries on it and can only work with my small table saw for about two hours (not running continuously, just the normal off-and-on of working). Charging is very slow, the individual charger works faster. You can't charge and use it at the same time. It's HEAVY; I think it weighs more than the four huge batteries I put on it.

That said, it has its uses. Wait for it to go on sale; it frequently sells for half or less of its MSRP.

Tucson has lots of tiny 'TB' homes that were built in the early 20th Century.

[edit] pg 130 identifies the boundaries of 'Tentville' which is/was just north of the UA campus

https://www.tucsonaz.gov/files/preservation/TucsonHealthSeek...

Price per square foot is less useful for a smaller size structure. consider the surface area of a box relative to it's volume: that's the materials.

But yeah, that's still expensive for a box.

What I don't get is that the price per square foot goes up as the size goes up. Doesn't it usually work the other way around?

Their prices are absurd. You can get a local builder to build something like these for significantly less.

You're a good man

You underestimate how many folks like to take a break from work with a quick workout.

As my neighbors have found out, you don't need a permit till you try to sell :)

Is that not possible in your current home?

Sure. Just like they can bust the windows in your current house and take all your stuff

I'm sure they know more about permitting than I do, but there's been a monetary factor to consider in the places I've lived. E.g., any home improvement greater than X dollars requires a permit, even indoors.

How long?

> What heating and cooling unit is used?

> You have several options when it comes to temperature control. Depending on your climate needs, you can save money by using a floor fan or go with a AC unit. Since the mini-office is...mini...it is a lot easier to heat and cool a small space.

For the price, you'd think it would come with a central A/C and a mini beer fridge.

There is an option to add AC and/or a fan.

it's basically a green house, it is going to get uncomfortably hot and humid during 5 or so months of the year in most of North America.

The single room air conditioners by mitsubishi would be a great option for a space like this though.

They're trying to get you to spend $3000 on an air conditioner, which is about double what a good heat pump would cost for it.

Looks like a stair climber.

My gut response as well. Reading that page was surreal, especially as the punch line failed to materialize.