What To Consider Before Turning A Shed Into Your Home
This past December our 12X32’ shed was delivered. This shed was made by Old Hickory buildings and it was custom ordered. As we have posted about what we are doing we’ve gotten a lot of questions about the process, the cost, the legality, etc. While I am not an expert on this matter, I do have a good amount of insight into what you should consider before doing this yourself.
Here is everything you need to consider before turning a shed into your home:
1. Is it legal to live in a shed where you live? Okay this one is more complicated because you will need to look at your states codes as well as the zoning specifically where you live. For most people living in a shed converted to a home will not be legal. Moving out of the city limits drastically increases your chances for it being legal. Some places require you to have a permanent foundation. The bottom line is you need to do your research. I’m in several shed to home Facebook groups and have seen stories of people building their home only to discover that it’s not legal where they live and they have to get rid of it. Don’t let this be you. Also, if you live in a place like we do where there aren’t really zoning regulations- you may run into troubles getting an electrical permit. So again, make sure you do your research.
2. What kind of foundation do you need? Talk with your shed manufacturer about their recommendations and also consider what kind of foundation you need to be legal where you live. This was a really hard decision for us because you will hear so many different opinions. People will tell you concrete pad is the only way to go. Some people swear by gravel. Some people do what we did and simply put them on blocks and we chose this because this what our manufacturer wanted us to do. We wanted to do a pier and beam foundation and may transition to this one day.
3. How do you want to insulate? Again, this is another hotly debated area. A lot of people are strong supporters of spray foam for shed to home conversions. We are going to use traditional insulation because it’s easy to install and it’s something we can do ourselves and less expensive. We will use spray foam (the kind you can buy in a can) around our windows and doors and to seal where the roof meets the walls. Spray foam is best done by professionals.
4. How are you going to ventilate? Most sheds have some sort of small vents but they aren’t going to be sufficient for a shed that’s going to be lived in. When we breathe we exhale a lot of moisture- also cooking, taking a shower, etc puts a lot of moisture into the air. If it doesn’t have a place to go you are going to have a mold problem on your hands. Some of the shed manufacturers will have options to add more ventilation but ours did not, so this is something we are going to have to address.
5. Where are you going to buy your shed? This is big because you really don’t want to buy a shed from just anyone. If you can it’s best to custom order one because you can add a lot of the features that make the shed more like a traditionally built home. You can make your studs 16 and floor joists 16 on center, and you can have your house wrapped. Some manufacturers allow even more customization than ours did. Most of the sheds you see on the lots are suited to only be a shed and not a home so they don’t have the house wrap, tar paper, etc. It’s a lot harder to add these features once a shed has been built. This is why we recommend having one custom built and for our shed company this did not cost extra.
6. How safe is your shed home going to be in bad weather? I’ve done a lot of research on this and what makes a home safe and to be honest, most homes are not built to withstand tornadoes. If you have a basement, that is certainly your best bet, but how safe are you down there while the rest of your home is crumbling on top of you? People feel safer in their traditional homes but it provides a false sense of security. I saw the damage of an EF4 tornado that hit Nashville. I saw 2 brand new homes that were completely flattened. I’m not trying to scare you but what I am trying to tell you is that a shed home is definitely not the place to be during a tornado but neither are most people’s homes. So really having a tornado shelter is your safest option. You can also build a root cellar that doubles as a tornado shelter.
7. What size should you get? We chose the biggest size we could afford. I recommend sitting down and doing a rough sketch of how you’d like to layout your shed to see if everything you want will fit. Figure out what your priorities are. For example having a decent sized kitchen and living space is bigger priority than large bedrooms. If you’re like us, you might have to take away some of your wants. You can always add on to your shed in the future.
8. What is your budget? Don’t just consider the cost of the shed and don’t underestimate how much it’s going to cost to finish the inside. Also consider the cost to prep the space and the type of foundation. It’s easy to look at a shed and see that $10k price tag and feel like wow I can get a house for $10K, but you’ll realize quickly that there is a lot more cost involved. Everyone wants to know how much our shed cost and very few people ask what it’s going to cost to make it a home. You could easily spend more finishing the inside than you did on the actual shed itself, especially if you aren’t doing the work yourself.
9. How are you going to pay for your shed? Obviously cash is king and if you can afford to buy your shed this way, this is the best. What I highly discourage is doing rent-to-own. What draws people to this is that there is no credit check so they’ll sign anybody up for these contracts. The problem is the interest is outrageous. For example our shed cost around $11k. If we did RTO on a 3 year contract we would end up paying around $18k for it. They will also repossess your shed if you miss your payments. I saw so many repo-ed sheds on the lots when we were shopping for sheds. During the RTO period you are not supposed to alter your shed in anyway, and if you do and it gets repo-ed you’ve lost all of that money in your payments and what you spent in fixing it up. If you can’t afford to buy it outright consider going to your bank for a small loan. We were able to get a line of credit that has a low interest rate through our bank.
10. What options are you going to add? We’ve gotten a lot of questions about why we had our shed custom built but didn’t have them put in any windows. Our shed company charged a lot to add the windows and doors and they didn’t have the ones we wanted. We saved a lot of money buying and installing our windows and doors and we were able to get much larger windows than what our manufacturer offered. Again, different shed manufacturers may have more options and the cost might be worth it to you. We upgraded our build by adding a tech shield barrier, Tyvek house wrap, and doing 16 on center floor joist and studs, tar paper under the roof, and we made the walls 8ft high.
We haven’t moved into our shed to home conversion and we are still working on getting the inside finished. We will definitely write in more detail once we’ve moved in and are living in it. We just got the two big front windows installed and it has drastically changed the look of our home. It really looked like a shed before but the windows made it look like a real home.
In terms of cost, without question you can build a shed style home yourself for much cheaper than you could buy one. You also could probably more easily build it up to code than trying to convert a shed to be up to code. We originally wanted to build our home but we opted to not do that because of time constraints. We are living in a camper that our friends loaned us over the winter, and they would like it back in the spring. After we started working on a few other projects on our raw land we realized pretty quickly that everything takes longer than you expect. After a lot of consideration and research we decided to turn a shed into a home. So far we are really pleased with our shed tiny home and we can’t wait to move in!
