Adding the Modern Touch to Steel Buildings for Your Garden

Garden sheds are a valuable addition to any garden, and steel buildings offer many advantages over other traditional types of garden sheds and outbuildings. However, many people think of steel buildings as singularly unattractive and hesitate to put one up on their properties. That may have once been the case, but modern styles and coatings have brought a whole new dimension to steel buildings that makes them not only functional, practical and economical, but also among the most attractive options for storage sheds, garages and barns available.

Advantages of Steel Buildings for Garden Storage

Steel is one sturdiest and most durable building materials available. It can easily be molded into any shape desired, making it adaptable to suit any design of building. Unlike wood, it doesn’t warp and shrink with time and weather, so the walls remain weather-tight and close-fitting even after years of use. In addition, steel buildings are less expensive than buildings made of other materials, including wood and fiberglass.

Most steel building kits include pre-drilled panels for constructing the walls, all labeled for easy construction. Most are made of powder-coated steel which not only adds attractive color, but protects the metal from rust and corrosion, making steel buildings nearly maintenance-free.

Functionality and Style

A steel garden shed offers you remarkable flexibility in function. The lack of interior columns for support allow you to build a larger shed with an open floor plan conducive to storing all sorts of garden equipment, including large riding mowers and tractors needed for maintaining larger gardens and yards. Steel buildings with straight walls provide plenty of space for shelving, while the open floor allows room for potting benches. Add electricity for grow lights and ventilation and you can even add a small greenhouse for starting and maintaining seedlings.

When it comes to style, you can purchase steel buildings that match your main house and fit perfectly into your landscaping. When you work with a reputable dealer of steel and metal buildings, you can choose the customization options that make your new garden or storage shed an asset to your property. Choose from multiple color and trim choices, including windows, doors and shutters to accessorize and upgrade the building you choose.

Whatever your customization choices are, when you add a steel garden shed to your property, you’ll be increasing your storage space, adding value to your property and enhancing your enjoyment of your home. For more information about choices in steel buildings, contact a manufacturer or designer of prefabricated metal buildings.

Need Extra Room? Consider Steel Buildings Instead of an Addition

Steel buildings are a fairly commonplace sight along rural roads, where they’re often used to house livestock, store grain and providing cover for farm equipment. They’re a growing presence in the suburban landscape as well, as standalone garages and storage sheds for homeowners. Versatile and surprisingly stylish when built correctly, steel buildings offer other advantages and features, though, especially if you find you need extra room for living. If you’re one of the many empty-nesters whose nestlings have come home to roost, or baby boomers who find that mom and dad need extra help to live on their own, steel buildings may offer a surprising alternative to the traditional room addition or room over the garage.

Why Steel Buildings Instead of A Room Addition?

Expense is one of the biggest advantages that steel buildings have over adding a room to your home. A room addition may involve digging a foundation, knocking out walls and rebuilding load bearing walls to accommodate the new room. Adding a room is also bound to increase your tax assessment and your taxes, so you’ll end up paying substantially more in taxes year after year.

Steel buildings, on the other hand, are completely stand alone structures. Most don’t require a dug foundation, though local building codes may require some sort of foundation. You won’t have to make any alterations to your current structure, and a new steel building won’t permanently alter your tax assessment for your home.

A Room Addition Is Forever

When you add on a new room, you’re making a permanent alteration to your home. Depending on the style and size of your current living space, it may look awkward and it may affect parts of your home that you love. One of the most attractive features of steel buildings is that you can take them apart as easily as you put them together. If the situation that requires an extra room in your home isn’t permanent, why should your solution be forever? When you choose a steel building, you can take it apart or easily adapt it for another use when it’s no longer needed for housing mom, dad or your returned college student.

A Standalone Building Provides Privacy

One of the least comfortable aspects of bringing another adult to live with you, even if it is mom, dad or your own kid. is the loss of privacy on both sides. Some homeowners get around the privacy issues by building a mother-in-law apartment over the garage or in the basement, but that can be prohibitively expensive. Today, you’ll find many styles of steel buildings that resemble small cottages, and can be outfitted with electricity and plumbing to provide the basic needs for residency.

If you’re considering building an addition to your home to serve as an in-law apartment or a room for a returning child, parent or sibling, be sure to consider the advantages of steel buildings for your purposes.

Base Your New Home on Steel Buildings

Steel buildings – they’re not just for storage anymore. Some of the most striking new home designs are based on steel buildings and steel building construction. If you’re looking for an economical and quick way to get your custom-built home up and livable, a steel building could be the perfect answer for you.

Save Time and Money

Steel buildings are prefabricated and delivered ready to erect, making them a much quicker option to traditional stick built homes. Depending on your local building codes, your steel home may not need a traditional basement and foundation, saving you the cost and time of digging a foundation. You can often put a steel building up over the course of a couple of weekends, and have it habitable almost immediately.

Building Code Compliance

Many companies that specialize in customizing metal buildings have an architectural department that will work with your specs to design the perfect home for you. While you need to be conversant with local building codes, the company will create a design for you that meets or exceeds all of your local building codes for residential use.

Energy Efficiency

Steel homes will save you money on energy costs as well. The steel frame construction is designed to fit tightly, and won’t shift and shrink the way that wood frame construction does. The weather tight construction guarantees no drafts or heat loss through the joints or chinks in the construction. Most manufacturers offer insulation options that will keep your home warm in the winter and cooler in the summer than most wood buildings.

Flexible Floor Plans

Unlike stick construction, which requires interior beams for load-bearing, most steel buildings derive their strength from their shape and require no interior beams or posts. The absence of interior support posts gives you an amazing amount of flexibility in designing your floor plan. Steel buildings are the ideal choice if you want a completely open floor plan.

Aesthetics and Appearance

Today, many steel buildings look nothing like, well, buildings made of steel. You can choose from many different styles and colors and customize your home with attractive windows, doors, trims and skylights. If you prefer – or if your local building codes require it – you can cover the steel with stone, brick or stucco facing to completely change the appearance.

Safety is a Steel Building

Steel is fire resistant, giving your steel home a natural boost when it comes to safety, but it’s also safer in other ways. Steel buildings are designed to withstand extreme weather conditions, from hurricane force winds to heavy snow loads that often collapse and damage roofs in stick-built homes. This can reduce your insurance costs as well as making you feel more secure in your home.

Steel buildings have many uses today, but the most surprising may be this one – high fashion, economical and safe homes. For more information on how a steel building could be the ideal solution for your residential needs, contact a supplier of steel buildings with your questions.

Steel Buildings for Physical Fitness

Is your fitness equipment taking over your home? Do you stumble over your treadmill and stub your toe on the end of the rowing machine sticking out from under your bed? Even worse, is the hassle of pulling it out of its many storage places a deterrent to the regular exercise you swore you’d get? Why not build your own standalone gym – right outside your back door? Attractive and versatile steel buildings make it easy to construct your own gym or physical fitness room so you’ll never have to put your fitness equipment away again. And with it always ready and set up for your use, you’re far more likely to get out there and use it. Never thought of creating your own standalone fitness room? Steel buildings make it easy and inexpensive.

Steel Building Cost Advantages

Your first thought may be about the expense of building your own gym. The fact is that constructing an 8x10 steel building – large enough to house several pieces of fitness equipment and a refrigerator and blender to mix up nutritious refreshments for when you work out – costs far less than adding a room to your house. In fact, depending on your area, it may even be cheaper than a family membership to the local gym. If you choose a steel building kit, you can save the cost of contractors by putting it up yourself with the help of one or two friends.

Maintenance and Upkeep

Steel buildings require very little in the way of maintenance. Choose a model made of heavy duty 100 percent recycled steel with powder coating, and you’ll never have to repaint it. The powder coating resists rust, corrosion and discoloration. The metal isn’t prone to insect infestation or rot, problems that plague wood construction. If you choose a Quonset building style arch construction, your steel building will be weather tight, safe in winds up to hurricane force and shed snow that can collapse the roof of other types of buildings.

Customization and Modification

Arch constructed steel buildings give you the most flexible options for layout and floor space. Because they need no interior beams for support, you’ll have the entire floor to lay out your equipment. High walls provide room for storage shelves and you can add windows and skylights to ensure lots of sunlight for your health. Outside, you can choose from many colors and textures so that your home gym fits in with your landscaping.

A home gym is more than the equipment you store under beds and in closets. If you’re serious about getting in shape and staying in shape, look at the many advantages offered by steel buildings in cost, flexibility and use.

Steel Buildings House Your Small Business in Style

If your home business is ready to move out of your basement and out on its own, you’ve probably priced monthly rentals in your area. When you recover from the sticker shock, consider taking a different route – steel buildings can house your small business in style – and much more cheaply than paying monthly rent in perpetuity. In fact, steel buildings offer many advantages as a home for your small business.

The Cost of Building Your Own vs. Renting

Renting may be a viable option if your business can be run out of a single room office space, but many businesses require something more specialized than a place to park your desk and a phone. If you’ll need renovations to make a rental space suitable for your occupancy, your cost of renting will go up dramatically. When you rent, you’ll be paying out expenses every month. When you decide to go the steel buildings route, your startup costs may be higher, but once it’s done, it’s done. Depending on the size and amenities you need for your building, you could easily recoup the cost of building your own place in as little as six months of not paying rent.

Customization Options Guarantee You the Perfect Spot

Steel buildings are the ideal home for businesses that require customized floor space. The arch construction of most small steel buildings gives you the entire interior to customize as you want. You don’t have to work around weight bearing beams, or design your floor plan to take them into account. They’re the ideal home for businesses like dance studios, gyms, racquetball courts and auto body shops because you have all the space you need to lay out in any way you want.

Low Maintenance and Upgrade Costs

Steel is one of the strongest and most durable building materials known. Most metal buildings are made of steel with a powder coating that inhibits rust, resists corrosion and won’t need repainting for years. Exterior upkeep will generally consist of hosing down the building periodically to clean off any surface dirt. Compare that to repainting a wood structure every few years and you’ll see how the savings add up.

In addition, steel doesn’t rot or attract insect pests, such as termites and carpenter ants. The tight fit of the custom-designed pieces won’t shrink or warp, so you’ll always have a weather-tight, strong building, and many steel building styles are designed to withstand hurricane-force winds and the weight of heavy snow.

If you’re considering moving your small business out of your basement or garage, but can’t stand the thought of paying monthly rent for something you’ll never own, take a closer look at the many advantages offered by steel buildings to house your business.

Advantages of Steel Buildings

Steel buildings are becoming ever more popular options for people who need storage, workspace, space for retail and manufacturing, even office space and space for living. While most people still look to traditional wood and brick construction when building rooms, storage space and retail space, steel buildings offer many advantages to traditional construction.

Durability

Steel is one of the most durable of all construction materials. It doesn’t rot, is fire-resistant, doesn’t absorb water and won’t mildew. Termites and ants can’t be bothered trying to digest it, and if the building is properly constructed, most other pests won’t try to nest in it.

Weather Resistance

In addition, steel construction techniques allow for constructing buildings that meet or exceed building codes for stability and safety in earthquake and hurricane zones. Arch-construction steel buildings, such as Quonset buildings and modified Quonset huts, shed snow more easily than most peaked roofs, making them a good option as storage and factory buildings in the snow belt, where heavy loads of snow often cause roof collapses. Between those specs and the natural fire resistance of steel, most homeowners find that steel buildings add very little to their homeowner’s insurance, or are far cheaper to insure than traditional structures.

Cost

Steel building construction saves money in a number of different ways. From the beginning, your costs are generally lower because steel building kits are less expensive than purchasing all the lumber and hardware needed to build a wood frame or brick building. In most cities and towns, your steel building will only require a cement slab foundation as opposed to a dug foundation, which saves you the cost and labor of digging and pouring a full foundation. In some areas for some uses, you won’t even need the slab foundation, just footings for the support posts.

Environmentally Friendly

It may seem counter-intuitive, but steel buildings are more environmentally friendly than wood buildings. Steel is 100 percent recyclable, and almost all steel buildings sold today are made of 100 percent recycled steel. That means that your storage buildings and garages are diverting steel from the waste stream. They’re also recyclable on the other end, so when your building reaches the end of its useful life fifty or more years from now, you can disassemble it and recycle it again. And if you decide that you’re done with it when it still has lots of use left to it, you can simply disassemble it and put it up somewhere else. Try that with a wooden or brick building!

Steel buildings are available in dozens of styles, many colors and with an endless variety of options for customization. Contact a manufacturer of steel buildings to learn about the many advantages steel construction offers for your project.

Steel Buildings On the Farm

Steel buildings are nothing new on the farm. Farmers have been using Quonset buildings for storage on the farm for decades. And that’s part of the appeal of steel buildings for farm use. The virtual indestructibility of steel means that the already low cost of pre-fabricated steel buildings earn their keep for decades longer than traditional brick or wood construction.

New technology – particularly new insulation technology – has greatly expanded the many uses for steel and metal buildings on the farm. Today, many farmers use steel buildings to house livestock, store farm machinery and warehouse crop storage over the winter. Even with all these expanded uses for metal buildings, though, there are still creative farmers who find unexpected ways to use steel building kits and metal buildings on their farms.

Put Up Kitchen

When harvest time rolls around, many farm families find that the home kitchen is completely out of commission for daily use because it’s being used to put up produce for the winter. Even a farmhouse kitchen can prove too small for the constant stream of corn, beans, peas, cucumbers and other produce, though. Many farmers have taken control of the situation by installing a put-up kitchen in a steel building on the farm. Since the building doesn’t require a dug foundation, it goes up quickly and costs far less than a traditional structure. With the appropriate venting and insulation, it stays cool enough to work during the hot days, and can double as a spring house during the cooler weather, freeing up storage space for jars of preserved fruits and vegetables.

Cheese House

Making cheese and butter requires cool temperatures and space. With many farmers turning to artisanal butters and cheeses, steel buildings offer an inexpensive option to an air-conditioned spring house for churning butter, paddling cheeses and storing cheeses for aging. A stand-alone cheese house is separate from the house, making it easier to sort out expenses for tax purposes, adding to the advantages of using a steel building for this purpose.

Farm Store

For those farmers who sell their own produce on site, steel buildings are an excellent option to traditional wood stores. Because they don’t require traditional posts and beams for structure, the shopkeeper has the entire inside floor space to arrange goods for sale. Installing a garage door in the back provides easy access to haul produce in and out, cutting down on the work of stocking the store – just haul in a flat of bins full of produce and back the tractor out.

Steel buildings provide innovative and creative solutions to typical farming situations. If you’re considering expanding storage space or constructing an outbuilding on your farm, discuss your options with a manufacturer of steel buildings to learn how many advantages they offer for agricultural uses.