my easy shed build. the good the bad the ugly and the just utter f&*king diabolical
ok, so there are a few posts here around sheds/ garages and the most economical ways to put them together. I thought break down the costs for anyone game enough to give it a crack. The size is 5m x 5.8 with a 5M auto roller door so rather ambitious as a DIY but here we go.
I got a quote from soup to nuts for about 45k for everything including excavation slab etc colorbond basic range with no windows and one man door. being a tight arse I thought i'd look elsewhere so I took advantage of easy shed's "one time offer" of the shed kit for about 6k. this was my first mistake. I should've read the signs when i made an appointment with the consultant and they didn't even bother to call at the agreed time... Customer service is beyond non existent at this place beyond them badgering you for payment.
So we'll start the slate at 6k. Before I could do this I had to lodge a planning application due to the size of my block, I'm an architect so I created this set myself and saved some more money but I'm guessing it may cost the average punter circa $1500 to get someone else to do it which would be a bargain considering the headache the council put me through. i think the lodgement was about $300
first off I was given a student planner to review the set, fair enough you have to start somewhere but taking 3 months to asses a garage is a joke- not to mention the 3 pages of RFI's containing all sorts of ridiculous questions. I've done high rise buildings with less RFI's from councils. I answered them all but were met with several conditions including needing to plant 3 trees in my back yard with a 5m canopy ... WTF? my backyard is tiny on a block that's 250 m2. Ladies and gentleman this is the reason there is a housing crisis.
Whilst I was doing this i arranged for the excavator to prep the pad for the slab, this was about $1500 but he also dug a trench from the house to the pad so I could run power and water $2000. All this time I'm waiting for the council... waiting waiting waiting. I arranged for the building permit $2400 but of course I couldn't get it without the planning permit so we worked together to do as much as we could without the planning permit. The building surveyor then said that because i moved the shed off my property 300mm to avoid the neighbors fence that was encroaching on my title i'd need to go back for a secondary consent with the planners... start the clock again.
I didn't end up getting the building permit until a week before the delivery and my concrete guy $5500 couldn't pour that week, so they kit arrived without a place to set it down. luckily my neighbor was doing a reno and wasn't living at his place. I paid for a surveyor to peg out the lines, since we already had a features and levels survey he charged me 1K but the numbnut the guy sent out missed the property line by 50mm so I complained and got half off. I did have to repeg it my self which was a pain. The building inspector for the preslab inspection didn't even know what he was looking at so I could've skipped the whole excercise. Funny note about the pre slab inspection- it had absolutly hammered down rain the week before and of course my piers were full of water. i spent two days frantically pumping the water out but because the ground water had risen so much they just filled back up... the inspector didn't even care.
During this time I paid for my easy shed, they were more than happy to take my money but were absolutely useless at answering any question about their drawings and products information. Like didn't even respond. They did the engineering and shop drawings but as I would discover there were plenty of shortfalls. They gave me a delivery date of 8-12 weeks lol. And it wasn't until the week before delivery that they told me the exact date which happened to coincide with a long weekend when i'd be away. Zero flexibility for easy shed to move the date, like nothing. The slab wasn't even down yet but they didn't care it was coming on that date. i repeat the customer service here is on a new level of terrible.
Next is the attitude i copped from their delivery driver. He turns up and start going off at me because he might scratch his truck on the trees. like mate, i'm not your logistics manager I have made a grand total of zero deliveries in a semi trailer. If you can't fit your giant arse truck down the street send a smaller one. He was a prick and totally typical of the whole easy shed experience. To his credit, he was pretty good on the forklift nd did manage to navigate through the tiny laneway with a full load so he redeemed himself.
I needed to find an installer and had quotes of 2k up to 6k wow! i finally found someone on airtasker who was keen to do it for 2k but from the get go I could tell he and his work mate were out of their depth. Long story short alot of the parts don't fit or drawings are incomplete or just wrong. The combination of an inexperienced crew and easy shed just being shit and basically unavailable to answer any questions unless you called them endlessly was a bit of a disaster. I ended up giving the installers a bit extra to finish it off since it took them about 6 days.. mind you half of that was them re-doing stuff and kind of scratching their heads. they were good sports about it and i kind of felt bad they'd dug themselves such a big hole but to their credit they got it done. so $2700 for the install
$6000 shed inclusive of engineering drawings
$1500 excavation
$2000 power and water
$3000 permits
$5500 concrete with 150 slab w/ wwf mesh and 7x 400x500 piers and an extra 2x2 bit on the side for a sauna
$2700 installers
$500 land surveyor
So all up a grand total of around $18,200 and about 6 months from submitting planning drawings to the end of install, mainly due to permits etc.
did I save some money? yes. was it worth it? maybe. I still need to tidy up a bit of flashing and epoxy the floor and install my workbench.
Here are my take aways;
- Don't try this on a small block where you need a planning permit. It probably added about 4 months to the whole process but i'm on a tight inner city Melbourne block. the entire department should be imploded. I would love to DOGE the shit out of those bludgers.
- Stay right away from easy shed, although the quality wasn't bad in fact it's sturdy AF, the customer service and general lack of clarity for their install was a complete joke- don't bother with them, pay the extra for a more reputable mob that will give you proper after sales service. they outsource this to a call centre overseas so you can guess how that goes....
- make sure you've got a survey, you'll need one for the building permit but it helps on a small block. turns out my neighbor was 300mm on my property which meant i could plan accordingly.
- Line the shed and insulate it. Add power and water and you have an instant man cave if you need it down the track.
There's still a bit more to do an ill post some pics when its done. I made the post to let people know you can actually have a double car garage for under 20k but it's a massive pain in the coight. Alot of things really stressed me out on this build, probably more than they should of but for what it's worth i'd do itall again but with a different supplier. Maybe i'll use the money i saved to buy a motorcycle to put in my shed?