Budget Breakdown: A Seattle Couple Build Twin Backyard Offices for $51K—No Permit Required

Not even two years after moving into their 1919 Seattle bungalow, which they bought at the start of the pandemic in 2020, Natalie Rohde and her husband, Patrick Haig, had a problem. The couple were busier than ever at their marketing and tech start-up jobs, each finding their calendars filling up with video calls and struggling to figure out how to juggle them from home. Not to mention, they had their hands full with an active toddler and were expecting another child.

"When we moved in, there was an existing one-room shed in the backyard that we turned into our shared office," explains Natalie. "But every night, we found ourselves looking at our schedules together and negotiating thirty-minute slots for calls the following day." The winner would get the quaint yet chilly, uninsulated backyard office, while the loser got a dark and cramped workspace in the basement. Neither was ideal.