You need a place to work — building “The Office”

It’s a little hard to work from home if you don’t have a dedicated work place. So it’s fitting that our first project was a dedicated office and tool room. This was a great way to get a taste of the nuances of building in the Gulf Islands. Working with Island’s Trust and the CRD isn’t complicated, but there are things to know which deserve their own blog post. Same goes for contractors — we were very lucky to work to have some grade-A providers and were tremendously happy with their performance. Though we were fortunate to have the recommendations of friends.

Exterior is in cedar and the roof is painted metal. The windows are Ply Gem, which we were very impressed with.

We also had some fun doing a Scandinavian white-wash for the interior office finish, over spruce ship-lap. This is a wood bleach and soap process that is a bit labour intensive, but it turned out incredibly well.

We also took the opportunity to re-route the main electrical service onto the office and then underground to the house. At the same time, we included a sub-panel and pre-wired a junction for backup power tie-in, and also threw in a circuit for a RV hookup. Because we needed to redo the panel at the house, we also took the opportunity rectify some electrical code issues we found along the way. Exterior lighting is controlled with switches inside the office and wirelessly at the house.

Total installed cost was approximately $200/sqf including materials, finishing, electrical & fixtures.

• Designer / Builder - McLennan Valley Woodworking

• Earthwork and drainage - Charlie’s Excavating

• Building materials and windows - Windsor Plywood

• Doors - Slegg

• Electrical - McIntyre Electric

• Woodstove, stovepipe, & chimney install, WETT Inspection - Dave the Chimney Sweep

• Gutter and gutter guard install - Gulf Island Aluminum