Living in a Shed During Construction?

I'm glad I'm not the only one heading into this adventure

We are going to demolish and live in our shed during the build. Our shed is 6 x 12 m. We already had a quarter of the area decked out as a home gym, this will become kids room. We will bring laundry benches for kitchenette from current house and get plumbing for dishwasher and washing machine installed. We will just cook with microwave. The reset will store our furniture and be parents bedroom and loungeroom.

We have a gas continuous flow hot water system which I would love to install but think it will cost too much to bring gas pipes down another 40m to shed. Have also been told it will cost a few hundred dollars to get it converted to LPG. Continuous flow suits better because after the build it will be a granny flat and shower will not be used all the time so don't want to store hot water in a tank.

I think its a great idea, would rather spend $10k and be slightly uncomfortable than throw it away on renting. Of cournse I may be eating my words in the middle of winter/summer

haha! It depends what your shed is made from and if you insulate it etc.

We thought ours would be hot and cold, and everyone keeps asking us are we freezing now it's winter, but our shed is besser brick, so it's actually been quite cool in summer and warm in winter.

On your bad days, just do what I do and tell yourself 'it's not forever ' But honestly, I think about 99% percent of the time I love it here.

We've lived in a shed (now really a house) for over 7 years now.

My husband, his 2 sisters and their parents lived here while their house was built back in the 1980's.

We decided to rent our house out and move up here to save some money (and have another baby). We changed it a lot - the wall where the 3 roller doors were is now built in with a sliding door, we have 3 separate bedrooms with storage on the mezzanine level above the bedrooms. We have a kitchen (with a dishwasher ), laundry, toilet and bathroom are in a separate building outside the door.

When we moved we had one 2 year old. He is now nearly 10 and we also have a 5 year old as well. We are building at the moment on our land next door to where we are living, so have been keeping a very close eye on the build.

It definitely has its advantages - saving money, being close while our house is being built, grandma living next door for occasional babysitting, but I am breaking my neck to move into the house now it is this close lol!!!

It also has its disadvantages though....

Not lined, so freezing in winter, sweltering in summer
Very dusty
Snakes/bugs and the like in the house - I was not happy about this - so we have screens everywhere now
We live in the mountains, so when it rains at night, you get wet going to the dunny as its outside

I was talking to the shed guy the other day and he suggested that they put in an internal wall and that we only line the walls in the living area to have a smaller space to try and heat/cool. Of course this will all cost more money, and I don't want to spend money on a wall I might want to pull down later.

I'm just wondering if anyone here built the internal walls themselves, was it hard and do you have any tips??

We're also thinking of doing the wall insulation ourselves (just get the shed company to do the roof) - has anyone done it and again any tips???

If its not a load bearing wall it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect. With 90 x 45 timber make sure your top and bottom lengths are how long you need the wall to be. Put in 600mm centres for the studs and noggings at 1200 high. Gyprock sheets 1200 wide so you just need to make sure you can secure the edges to the timber frame and at least one centre stud. Hope that makes sense. Screw the frame into the adjoining walls and dynabolt the bottom rail to the floor. Once you have your frame up, install your insulation (pink batts are fine) you can hold these in by taping it in with packing tape and then attach your gyprock. Easy! - I have no idea really DH just briefly explained it to me. We are putting up our own walls. We are also going to install the split system we will put in our new house, the electrician will just relocate it after the house is built. Apparently it wont leave too much of a hole in the wall.

Thanks Anna1 (and her OH ) - yes, definitely won't be load bearing, just needs to stay upright and reduce the area we need to heat and cool.

Also, doesn't matter how "rustic" it looks, as I said before it'll probably come down later on depending on what we use the shed for.

Hopefully we can scrounge some of the materials up cheap too...

I have found out this week I can get an LPG conversion kit for our current gas continuous hot water system for about $100, then all we have to do is rent the cylindar gas bottles. Thrilled this saves so much money and we will be able to have hot showers!

We were going to live in our camper trailer while waiting for a rental to become available, but pretty quickly realized rentals in this small town were lacking in availability. Cutting the long story short we ended up moving into the shed, originally thinking we might have to still sleep in the camper. With kids it made sense to be out here where their noise won't worry anyone and they can "run free".

Our set up is pretty temporary. There were kitchen cupboards here already, and a shower base (just a base, not connected or anything). The shed roof is insulated but that's about it.
What we did is get a pressure pump for water from the tank (which was filled by dam water) and the first priority was getting some filters so that it was safe to drink (including a UV filter just in case).

Camping stove for cooking (oh I look forward to having an oven again!) and boil a pot of water for the dishes.
We did install a wood fire heater too for the cold winter months (that was a priority and the thought of freezing here in the winter made me cringe). And put some windows in and blocked off the roller door (made a regular entry on the side) for the winter months to help keep some heat in, then opened it up again for summer.
For showers we use a Coleman Camp Shower system (hubby put the shower base on stumps and plumbed it to outside), as a water source we have a green bin that we refill (every few nights or so) via garden hose connected to tap outside. Probably go through a 9kg gas bottle in 6 months, it's pretty much like an instant gas system.
Washing machine is connected to the same tap & drains out about 10m from shed.

It is a lot like camping, and even with roof lining alone it seems tolerable temperature wise in the winter
Critters, yes there has been a few mice, spiders around (luckily the cat takes care of the mice eventually and when we had a dog it would eat the bugs!). But at least there isn't heaps of mozzies or flies that get in, that would be most annoying!! Even with the roller door open most time in summer not too many critters here. The biggest annoyance is the dust, I've pretty much given up! The other thing is sealing - I wish it was sealed better so that it was warmer in the winter.
We do have shelving / clothes / boxes between our bed and the kids for some privacy, but it's prettymuch a big open shed. I did try to explain a mezzazine to hubby but he didn't even know what the word meant!

In hindsight we may have spent more money and really decked out the shed, maybe not built straight away. This was so temporary because we figured it was for 12 months at the most, now pretty much a year and a half later I'm looking forward to being in a house. But something I realize too is if the shed was decked out we would be less inclined to build anyway as there wouldn't be as much of a need.

Surprisingly even though our set up is kind of basic (oh we have dialup internet and sattelite tv of course), I certainly haven't found any reason to hate my time spent here at all and don't regret it. The tradies and builders didn't mind, but I generally do try to stay out of their way anyway, usually have a sticky beak after they go home.

So all in all I would have put a little more effort in setting us up here - at least a proper electric oven (we did get powerpoints and a couple of flouro lights wired in by the electrician at same time as sat tv was installed). And it would have been good not to live with Hubbys tools as well.

Moving into a house the kids most look forward to having their own rooms. I guess I'll miss being able to see exactly what they're up to with a simple glance, but at the same time I'm sure peace will be enjoyed when they get sent to their rooms!!!

As I've posted before about being a "shed-dweller" and promised to post some pics, I thought I'd better get around to it.

Well, here goes:
DSC_1041.jpgDSC_1045.jpgDSC_0912.jpg
We love living in our shed and sometimes wonder why we're building the new house

Cheers
zeke

Pebbles, thanks for the detailed post. Lots of helpful hints there from someone who is "living the dream"

Zeke - wow that is one comfortable looking shed you have there. You even have piccies up on the walls We've been in our house for years, and I still haven't hung pictures Very nice

What have you put on the floor???

They're actually carpet tiles from discount city carpets(+ a bit of cheap/nasty vinyl in the kitchen area). They just get loose-laid on the floor and seem to work very well. Enormously practical and easy to clean or just replace one or more tiles in seconds.....no more worries about spilling anything. Unfortunately the carpet in the new house will be less easy to maintain, but it will be softer underfoot

Cheers
zeke

Good idea re: carpet tiles - has to be warmer than walking on cold concrete.

Just showed my OH - he has alot to live up to

That's one fantastic looking shed Zeke. I thought ours was nice, but yours is way better!! I do have a much smaller space and 2 small kids to contend with though

Gee Zeke, I reckon your shed is a LOT bigger than the 3 bedroom unit I rent and no, I'm not joking

Hi All

Thought I would just post a few shots of how our shed (home) is progressing - slowly but surely, we still don't have council approval on our new home so we're not panicing - yet. DH started construction a few weeks ago until we came up with a new design which meant he needed to take down the wall he had already built - he was not a happy camper!

The new plan:


The cleanup:


Bedroom wall goes up:


Will post some more in a few weeks, we are gutting our house moving kitchen etc into shed in early July so should be looking more homely by then.

My god, after seeing those pictures there is no way I'm posting pics of mine (dirty, dusty & messy). Mind you if my shed looked like yours I doubt I'd be wanting to move into a house!

Hi there,

I have posted a related topic about insurance on a shed with personal belongings in it....that is I cannot find any company to insure our shed while we are not living on the property....maybe we could say we plan to live there?? Any help greatly appreciated. Ame

I'm planning to convert the back half of our shed into a granny flat/ kids games room.
I would recommend to anyone doing this sort of fit-out for a permanant use to use blue-termite treated framing. Garage and shed slabs generally have no termite barriers installed before pouring so having untreated bottom plates etc sitting staight on the concrete is asking for trouble depending where you live.
70mm x 35mm T2 framing is only around $2 per metre so its cheap insurance

Yes insurance, we were with I think NRMA for contents in NSW, the sister company here in WA is SGiO, they only insured us living in the shed (just contents) because we were already had a policy (NRMA which carries over as SGiO here) and we were building. When I inquired about it prior to moving over here I found that most companies won't insure you if living in a shed and particularly if you don't already have an existing policy.
Others that will I think have certain standards (ie shed may have to be lined / insulated etc).
From an insurance perspective I think we were lucky, but I do wonder if something major happened (ie fire) weather an excuse would come up why we can't make a claim.