A married couple turned a shed spotted in a Home Depot parking lot into a stunning two-story lake house with two balconies, which they sold for a tidy profit.
A series of TikTok reels from Just_a_glimpse reveals the transformation from shed to HGTV-worthy home.
The viral videos have racked up over 8 million views and tens of thousands of comments from admiring fans.
“I mean, I love it!” exclaims one. “But it’s sad that this is what we’ve come to because purchasing a home is nearly impossible now.”
How to build a home from a shed
In 2021, Dawn Cook, a grandmother who lives in East Tennessee, passed by the 18-by-36-by-21-foot shed sitting in the Home Depot parking lot while she was out shopping with her husband.
“They had this two-story shed with a little porch on it,” Cook recalls to Realtor.com®. “We went inside of it, and I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’”
The double-story shed was from the Tuff Shed TR-1600 Sundance Series.
Cook, a former real estate agent who had already fixed up several homes of her own, plus a single-wide trailer that she’d sold, immediately saw the potential.
She and her husband, Richard, decided to add several upgrades to the shed and paid $27,000 for the shell.
The couple also owned a parcel of empty land sitting on Douglas Lake in Dandridge, TN, which they wanted to do something with.
With her mind for design and her husband’s enthusiasm for building, she knew the pair could turn the plain shed into something special.
“Anything I want to do, my husband will make happen,” she says. “He’s just got that brain.”
But the couple also know their limits. Tuff Shed prebuilt most of the interior and the two balconies and patio. Cook’s floor plan was all in her head.
“I’d tell them, put the window 2 feet from the door,” she says.
The couple, who have no formal construction training, hired professionals for the crawl space foundation, electric, plumbing, and spray foam insulation. The lot already had a well and septic tank. A builder made sure everything was up to county house code.
The “shome” (combination of “shed” and “home”) ended up with two bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, two balconies, a full kitchen with a gas range and a large sunken island, laundry closet, and large patio.
DIY route to turn a shed into a home
The stylish but homey interior is Cook’s vision, a look she calls “a blend of farmhouse and beach house—even though it’s on a lake.”
Where Cook could have gone with drywall for the ceilings and walls, she insisted on tongue and groove and shiplap.
“I did that shiplap all by myself,” she says proudly. “It came out beautiful, but it took a long time.”
The unfinished kitchen cabinets were stock from Lowe’s that Cook painted sage green to complement the green-infused Brazilian granite countertops that she fell for despite their hefty $6,000 price tag.
“I just like what I like,” she says. “Everything came out the way I saw it in my head.”
Cook also found vintage and Hobby Lobby pieces to jazz up the farmhouse-inspired decor (mostly bought from Lowe’s and Home Depot).
There are also the whimsical touches such as the fish sink in one bathroom and a video arcade game in the kitchen. The floors are vinyl plank with custom carpet on the stairs and upper floors, to make them more kid-friendly.
When a plumber left a drain line for the upstairs bathroom bulging from the kitchen wall, Richard improvised, building a matching sage-green birdhouse over the stove to stylishly conceal it.
Not wanting to waste any space in the 1,296-square-foot shed, Cook added a half-bath under the stairs, along with a “clubhouse” for her grandkids.
Turning a profit on a shed-home
The cost to turn a shed into a home was approximately $170,000 (minus the shell).
The couple lived in it for six months while carrying out the renovation. They decided to list it so they could move on to their next project: a barndominium.
The shed-house received many offers and was sold over the asking price at $460,000.
Even so, Cook feels if she’d waited six months, “I could have gotten an extra $100,000.”
She also believes the home was priced too low because it can be listed only as a one-bedroom, despite having two, due to the home being on a “one-bedroom septic.”
“That hurt us on the appraisal,” she says. However, the lake-view location definitely helped the home’s popularity.
Cook admits, “We made a lot of money off it.”
So did the buyer, who sold it in March 2025, closing at $505,000.
As to whether Cook will make a career of turning sheds into swoon-worthy homes, she laughs.
“If somebody hired me, I’d probably want to. I know my husband and kids want me to.”
Daughter Amanda McCormick, who made the TikTok reels showing off her mom’s work, has bigger ideas.
“I want her to get a TV show,” she says.