Living in a Shed During Construction?

Has anyone eperienced this? To save costs in rental myself and my partner are actually considering decking out our shed (which we want on the property anyway) to house us for the months that we are building. The plan is to store our belongings in the shed, set up a make shift lounge room bathroom and cook and sleep in a borrowed caravan. Our council allows it and as my partner does a lot of diving, a plumbed shower outside wont go unused in the future.

What I am really asking is: If you have experienced this, is it worth living in squallor for the months of construction or are we better off to retain our sanity and tough it out in the rental market?

Well we're actually doing this and we like it so much we tried to cancel the house

Seriously, the advantages are huge. The biggest and best one is being on site throughout the build - no travelling to see what's been done. The rental savings can be ploughed into decking out the shed, which will be an ongoing asset. Also it meant only one move for us. Another big advantage is that we have a real "Please take your time and don't hurry" approach to the house build.

But I have to say, our shed is a pretty good one as sheds go. It is 16.5 metres by 7.5 metres (we are on 20 acres) We've lined and insulated it, separated off a bedroom at one end and and bathroom/laundry at the other, covered the floor with carpet tiles and vinyl in the kitchen area (IKEA s/s modular kitchen) We have 3 r/c split system a/c (from the house we demolished) home theatre area, Foxtel etc etc.

Things we miss are the dishwasher, a proper oven, an effective rangehood (only have an exhaust fan) and insulated storage space. We have another REALLY big shed that could store 8 vehicles, but the temp in there can swing between 60 and 10 degrees C in the space of 12 hours.

So, as an "expert shed dweller" I see the priorities as:

1. Insulation
2. lining
3. Exclusion of critters, insects etc....shed rollerdoors etc are NBG for this
4. Services and creature comforts

The advantage of being on-site during the build is the fantastic plus and has been surprisingly well-tolerated by the tradies.

I should also point out that we did a lot more with our shed than we intended at the outset, but it's been fun and will be worthwhile in the long run.

Go for it, I reckon

Cheers
zeke

PS I should probably post a couple of piccies when I suss out how to do this.

You guys are well and truly set up!


amieh, it won't hurt to give it a go, if it's only the two of you. If it doesn't work out you can always get a rental. Is the Caravan big enough, comfy enough to sleep/cook in?

what about the ..............................spiders......................?

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You Might want to talk to Pebble. Shes currently living in a shed on the block while their house is being built.

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What's it costing you to setup a laundry, toilet and shower in a shed? Surely plumbing work doesn't come cheap.

Not sure yet. But has to be cheaper than paying rent for 12plus months

Gawd I wish I could do it too!! if my build takes 6 months that's over $8k of rent I would 'save' on!

I'd do it in a heart beat if I could. Wouldn't hesitate. It would probably put you off camping for the rest of your life though!! You can always use a public laundry if need be - and I'm sure our grandmothers would tell us there's nothing wrong with a washing board and a bar of soap either. It's not forever, so you'd get by. You'd need a loo though

We've spent over 30k on rent whilst waiting over 18 months for developers, council and builder to get us out of here. You could probably buy a nice granny flat for that and then you'd also have somewhere comfy for family and friends to stay when they visit. I've seen granny flats going cheap on ebay.

My parents did this in the 50s while my Dad built our family home, he made every brick in the house all 53,000 of them in a brick machine that made 5 at a time, I don't recall how long they said it took all told, I vaguely remember the "shed" or as we called it the temporary house when I was a small child, by the time I was about 10 it was removed and another large shed put on the back of them block, there were not the restrictions back in those days I think my Dad did pretty much what he wanted.
We feel pretty fortunate that we are able to rent the house next door to us while we demolish and rebuild, while we are paying "market rate" rent the advantages are fantastic, no change for mail delivery, kids still catch the same bus to school same ph number, very small moving costs etc etc, so it feels almost like we are living on our own land!

We have been living on site in our caravan for the last six months. We sleep in the caravan and use our newly built shed during the day. The caravan has three solar panels and keeps a 240 ltr fridge and big Evakool running. We also have Phase One power in the shed which becomes handy with the cooler nights. Until so far we stayed up late in the shed but in a month time or so we might have to retreat to the caravan and to use the reversed airo to make it more comfortable.

A couple of months ago we completed a shower, toilet and Laundry Tub in the shed. Cost were as followed:
- Treatment Plant (sand filter, sub-surface disposal area): $ 12 K, Laundry Tub - $0, Shower Base - $180, toilet $120, taps, etc. $40. Plumber $1200 + $220 for pipe works to connect shed to Treatment Plant. Furthermore we spent about $300 to erect walls. To keep costs low we picked up a couple of things, like the Laundry Tub, some taps, copper pipes, shower head, towel racks, etc. up from the Refuse Tip shops as we have here.
Our plumber was happy to let us do some things ourselves as he charged $65/hour. So we installed the toilet, shower base and air vent ourselves.

I have to add that we only have cold water from our gravity fed 3000 liter black Colorbond water tank, sitting on a two meters high stand. It's one of hubby's projects to use as less pumps as possible and we shower with water which is heated up by the sun, so no need for a Hot Water System. That went pretty well this summer but by now we are using the shower in the caravan.

cheers

Nice shed, MP, not sure if you mentioned to build the shed yourself somewhere, but if not I would like to advice you to keep a close eye on the building process.
Our shed is a Fair Dinkum four bay with 4 roller doors and build by a local shed builder. He does Triton and Fair Dinkum. A good builder overall I would say but he left us which huge gaps between the wall of the shed and the top of the doors . I am talking about a gap of at least 100mm. Light shines through it at night, mossies have free entry and in the evening we can feel the cold air coming in.
When we asked him why he had done it this way he replied that this was the Australian way of building a shed. So please be aware in case you have to live in the shed for a longer time.

cheers

We're doing this, and we've got 2 small kids, so it is do-able. The only thing that drives me crazy is not having a lot of room, but the kids are outside a lot and most of our furniture is in storage, we only have the basics. I keep thinking how fantastic our new home is going to feel once we have moved in! We are living here during two builds (one for investment) so the money we will save on rent/mortgage interest payment if we hadn't of sold our own house is huge

We converted a brick shed which already had 'rooms' separated as it was originally stables. I would recommend making it as nice as possible, we have lino and carpet, and I know this makes it seem more like a real home. We don't mind not having a real oven, we have one like you would have in a caravan and it's great, plus we also have camp ovens regularly, and that is great fun (we are on 8 acres).

It has been quite good so far (5 months), I would definitely recommend it.

I'm envious C&D sound like holidays I had when I was a kid and it makes me think of good times past!

These sheds and caravans that you have set up actually sound better than the two rentals we have lived in whilst building, seriously.