Category: Inspiration

We all need extra space for storage, recreation or both. Steel DIY sheds offer you an affordable storage and building solution that delivers both style and function for your backyard. Steel offers numerous structural, cost, and environmental benefits over wood – click here to read our blog on steel vs. wood structures – and can be easily modified or added to to achieve whatever look you’re going for!

DIY sheds come in all shapes and sizes; from simple outdoor storage sheds, to decorative and homey garden sheds that add to the aesthetic quality of your backyard. With a DIY steel building kit from Norsteel, you can get your structure set up in as little as a week without breaking the bank. With the basic framing and insulation complete, it’s just a matter of making your shed your own.

Check out some of these cool DIY shed ideas that you can add to your yard!

The Blank Canvas

The tried-and-true prefab metal shed is a perfect solution for the first-time DIYer. With all the structural benefits of steel, 12 wall colour and 6 trim colour options, a metal DIY prefab shed can offer you both style and function at a fraction of the cost.

Customization of your prefab DIY shed is easy too. We offer a number of optional accessories including insulation, gutters, downspouts, and interior liners, so you can easily add to the interior and exterior of your building after its been erected. Prefab metal buildings from Norsteel all come with at least one framed opening which can be used for a standard door, or for a garage door later on.

While we like to think our prefab buildings are perfect just the way they are, we understand that many of our customers might look at them as blank canvases on which they can create the building of their dreams. Whether you want to add wood or stone accents to the exterior, or completely renovate the interior space to make it livable, anything is possible with the basic steel prefab building in place.

Here are a few cool DIY shed ideas that can really expand the usable space of your backyard:

The Home Office

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are now working from home for a time – and some are staying remote forever! For those who don’t already have a home office, with a little creativity and extra work a DIY shed can serve as your backyard home office.

With a steel frame and a bit of customization, you can achieve a look similar to the one above. The building pictured here is built using a metal frame, with a sliding glass door and wood paneling added to the exterior for a unique look. On the inside, wood flooring and drywall have been added to make the office feel warm and inviting. The result is a sleek modern home office for the remote worker!

The Man Cave

Maybe bringing the office home sounds like the exact opposite of what you’re after. If you’re trying to escape the daily grind, instead of bringing it home with you, maybe a backyard getaway is more your style? A DIY shed can just as easily be converted into a man (or woman) cave for you and a few friends to escape to on the weekends.

The backyard shed pictured here has been converted into a sport-watching, beer-drinking, backyard escapee’s dream! With a metal exterior and interior wooden framing, insulation, drywall, and warm hardwood flooring added to give it that homey feel, this same look could easily be re-created using a prefab metal building as the base of your structure.

The Backyard Studio

Maybe you’re looking for a more creative outdoor workspace? Thanks to the large framed openings available on many of our prefab metal buildings, turning a DIY shed into an artist’s studio with ample natural light is totally doable with one of our EasyBuild steel building kits.

The artist’s studio pictured here is framed in wood and uses stucco to insulate and add some texture to the exterior. This same look can be achieved using a prefab metal building kit. Simply add a layer of metal netting between the metal exterior and the stucco to ensure that the stucco will adhere effectively to the exterior of your building.

But don’t worry, you won’t need stucco to achieve a livable outdoor studio. Thanks to our optional insulation packages, your new backyard studio space will be effectively insulated without any additional work or accessories. It’s really that easy.

The Tiny House

With just a little bit of space, you can create something big, bold, and surprisingly luxurious!

Creating a home away from home – or rather, a backyard mini-home – is easy with a DIY prefab building kit. Equipped with a kitchen, seating area, upper loft, and even a washroom, the tiny home pictured here pulls out all the stops to achieve a fully livable building. The addition of plumbing and a second floor push this building to new heights, as it truly becomes a backyard guest house.

Prefab Metal Building Kits from Norsteel

Norsteel makes it easy to create a usable, visually interesting, and cool DIY shed for your backyard. From start to finish, we’re your expert partner in all things DIY construction.

Already have an idea for your backyard shed? Contact us today and one of our steel building experts can help you plan out the construction of your building. We’ll help you build an office where you can focus; a man cave you can escape to; a backyard studio where you can be creative; or even a tiny home where you can live.

Click here to contact us today. Let’s build something great together.

With a prefab steel building kit from Norsteel, your building will retain all the benefits of metal framing, exterior panelling, and roofing, while your interior will still be yours to customize and create.

Owners and Customers

As a business owner, being passionate about what you can provide to your customers is a necessary requirement. To me that means understanding each individual customer’s unique requirements and then adapting my product to best suit their specific needs. It means fully recognizing the versatility of my products and thinking outside of the proverbial box, to create solutions that are unique and exciting. As owners of Norsteel Buildings, it was a very important thing for my husband and I to experience our service from our customers’ perspective…so we made ourselves customers. Here’s our story: 

Our Backyard Project

In 2007, my husband and I moved into an incredible neighbourhood in the middle of rural Ontario. We were surrounded by the Oak Ridges Moraine and our property was immersed in a beautiful forest of 80 foot high sugar maples, cherry and oak. With 4 children, the house and property became our biggest investment. Instead of looking for a weekend getaway, we became determined to bring the cottage-life, to our home. The key to convincing my husband was that everything, from the landscaping to the building had to be virtually maintenance-free…

We decided to fully landscape the backyard – complete with patios and separate pool area, and I was determined to design my own pool cabana that could easily double as an apartment when relatives came to visit.

That’s when the research began.

I sourced out the pool first. I felt very confident after speaking to a representative of Mayfair Pools in Markham. The owner was very forthcoming with information, incredibly knowledgeable about many aspects of construction and landscaping and he had several referrals for me to look into. For landscaping, we went with a family owned and operated company – Dutch-Style Landscaping. They were in our neighbourhood working on several other yards at the time, so I was able to see their finished projects and speak with other customers.

Lastly (after I went to the permit office to make sure I had all the information I needed in terms of size and distance from the property line), I started to look into possibilities for the pool cabana. It was overwhelming.

How totally ironic that my first thought was to go with wood? Seriously….I have been in the steel building industry almost 40 years, and my first inclination was to build my own pool cabana in wood so it would match with my house.

You see at that time, our building focus at Norsteel was mainly on Industrial, Agricultural and Commercial applications. It took my husband’s adventurous spirit to look at my collection of photos, turn to me and say – “We can do it in steel.”

And so began our experience with Residential Pre-Engineered buildings.

That night Sean and I were up for hours, designing and re-designing, until everything we wanted was on the preliminary drawings. Things like an overhang porch, multiple entrances and bar height windows, side door washroom entrance, and high peaked ceiling. We discussed the inside space optimization and the “clear-span” interior (no posts inside) which would give me a totally open concept to work with and cathedral ceilings

My biggest worry was the look of the exterior. How could we make our typical steel building look like something other than steel? More research….We found steel panels in various colours, some that looked like stucco, some like wood, and some that even looked like brick. The options went on and on. In the end, we chose to put stucco on the back and sides and we called a friend of ours to brick the front of the building so that it matched our house.

Lastly, and most importantly, the concerns I had about the safety issues involved in putting anything up within our forest…were now gone. Trees are constantly falling (keep in mind they are on average, 80 feet tall), and I was worried that any structure could be compromised by a falling tree or the incredible amount of snow we get in the wintertime. With Pre-Eng structures I knew that the building would meet or exceed all building codes for our area. I also knew it would be strong, durable and virtually maintenance-free.

It took almost an entire year to complete our backyard project, but now that it’s complete, we enjoy every moment because the entire thing is as maintenance-free as we wanted – from the landscaping, to the building.

Pushing Our Boundaries

So how did this backyard project change things at Norsteel?

I’m going to say that one of the main reasons that we did this project was to test the boundaries of our own product line and to learn what we could from the customer’s perspective. All true.

I learned a lot from this project. I learned a lot about our buildings. I learned what I needed to teach our consultants so they could think outside the box and think of a pre-engineered building as something more than a square foot measurement.

It is from our own experience with our pool-house that we created our new product line for backyard shops and garages. And it was our experience with contractors and the permit office that spear-headed our client-centered focus at Norsteel…because sometimes there are frustrations when putting up any building, and sometimes you really need to speak to someone who can help – right away.

I can also, with complete honesty, tell my customers that my building is exactly what my building was supposed to be. That after over 10 years, it still looks great. The stucco panels have not faded and don’t look weathered and I clean them (actually Sean does…), with a power-washer each year. This building is stronger than my house. It holds up to harsh winters and it doesn’t leak.

It is from this experience that I tell our customers that when you are planning your building, make it bigger than what you think you need – because inevitably, you will need more space. And lastly, if my husband would take his old race car out of it, I could FINALLY make the inside what I know it can be (which is likely the reason that car hasn’t moved in a decade) – because I have a clean slate interior to work with and nothing but clear, usable space in which to create. And then I could take some pictures and show you the inside too.

Come to Norsteel – not just because you need a steel building. I hope you come to us because you recognize that we really want to help you create a lifetime of memories, in a building that makes sense for you.

Thanks to everyone who helped make our backyard project happen!

Kind Regards,
Michelle