How to get broadband to a garden office

An interesting post by Paul Ockenden on Alphr on this question that crops up again and again in which he looks at various ways of getting your shedlike atmosphere digitally wired. Here's the scenario:

Frank's office is actually a posh shed, built from wood, but with insulated walls, double-glazed windows, lighting and heating. However, there’s no telephone line or internet connection. Frank has a fairly reliable broadband connection to his house, but this is more than 150ft away; he can’t pick up his home Wi-Fi network from the new office, since his broadband router is (and must remain) on the opposite side of the house. Frank is going to run his business from this office (he’s a freelance project manager), so he wanted to know the best option for receiving a reliable data connection.

If this sounds like you, it's well worth a browse.
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Thursday posts are sponsored by Cabin Master: garden offices and studios to fit any size garden. Top quality contemporary or traditional buildings.

Tiny House of the Year

Sheds, beach huts, and treehouses all have one, and now tiny houses are getting in on the 'of the year' competition fun. The Tiny House of the Year 2016 is run by USA tiny house guru Michael Janzen (entry deadline end of October) and like other similar competitions has a range of categories - best front door, best bathroom, best stairs, best transforming furniture, best interior design, best exterior design, best kitchen, best ladder, best loft, best storage feature, best use of reclaimed materials -  as well as an overall winner. Pictured above is one of the early entrants, Tina & Luke's Basecamp Tiny House.

Click the link above for full details of how to enter, but essentially it's open to all adults who have a tiny house less than 500 square feet in size.

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Wednesday posts are sponsored by The Stable Company®, the UK's premier supplier of garden offices and garden rooms. Click here

Garden office chair

If you want to add an extra element of garden to your garden office, here's just the thing from design studio Lula Dot. Here's what they say about it: "The user can rest their feet on real grass and get that garden feeling. The grass is easy to keep and will thrive indoors with a little water, light and occasional trimming." It's made from steel pipes, natural fibre rope (which helps let the grass see the light) and comes with a fibreglass footrest covered in soil and grass.

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Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of which do not require planning

Exclusive Toolshed Colouring Book sample

We previewed the shed colouring book and journal emerging from Lee John Phillips’ Shed Project back in July (details here) so we're delighted to offer you an exclusive download from the book which is published this week, courtesy of the nice publisher folk at Laurence King.

To get your free download simply click this link (or the image) to go to a Scribd page and download from there. Happy colouring!

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Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.

designjunction sheds at London Design Festival

Design show designjunction is up and running in London's King's Cross around Granary Square as part of the annual London Design Festival until Sunday. Look out for the eight bespoke red sheds/tiny houses filled with, what it says here are, "immersive design concepts" which "play home to conceptual installations, high caliber creative projects and live activity from a host of luxury brands".

Look out too in the same area for the SmartHouzz from Houzz, a bright green pod that showcases ways to maximise small space living through smart design, storage ideas and technology, including in small shedlike office spaces.

Photographs: Chris Snook --------------------------------------------------------

Friday posts are sponsored by Warwick Buildings, manufacturers of outstanding quality timber buildings. Click here for more information.

Property Search Group: Shedworkers

A nice piece in Welsh News Extra about Property Search Group which has left its previous HQ on an industrial estate and gone down the garden office route in a model designed by Rubicon Garden Rooms. As a result, the owners Julian and Kerry Lee say they are now able to hire more staff. According to Julian:

“It’s great. We’ve got the perfect, self-contained space with everything we need. We can now open our French doors and have lunch on the patio in a lovely established garden, which is something most people would love. We had an office on a local business park, but being able to move into our own premises here has been a wise business move.”

The office is actually an L-shaped structure, just under is 30 square metres, including a kitchen and lavatory as well as the large open plan office.

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Thursday posts are sponsored by Cabin Master: garden offices and studios to fit any size garden. Top quality contemporary or traditional buildings.

How to decorate a garden office

An excellently detailed pictorial post at Lobster and Swan by Jeska who runs The Future Kept home decor shop shows how she put together the interior of her new Swedish-style garden shed (a B&Q 6x4 Apex Shetland shed painted in Cuprinol Terracotta Garden Shades). Well worth a browse for inspiration. ----------------------------------------------------

Wednesday posts are sponsored by The Stable Company®, the UK's premier supplier of garden offices and garden rooms. Click here

Why people hide in the garden office

New research by Shedstore.co.uk indicates that a fifth of people admit to hiding from their partners and children in the shed, with 1 in 7 spending at least 10 hours in there each week. More than a third describe it as their sanctuary.

Almost four in ten of all shedowners polled have turned their shed into a hobby or craft room, with woodwork and painting rooms the most popular usages, while nearly 10% work or run a business from their sheds and a similar figure used them simply to read, listen to the radio and watch television.

One in 20 admitted they often use their sheds to do things that their other halves wouldn’t approve of, such as drinking and smoking.

Shedstore.co.uk also asked shedowners how much they thought the contents of their sheds were worth. Around 17% have possessions worth at least £2,500 in their garden sheds and almost a third said put the figure at over £1,500. The overall average was £750. Only 4% said nothing had been stolen from their shed, although a fifth said they never locked it.

Tracey Hartwell, sales manager at Shedstore.co.uk, said: “The simple garden shed has evolved into something much more than a place to stockpile possessions and de-clutter the house. It’s become an extension of the house; a place to work, rest and play." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of which do not require planning

Roald Dahl's writing shed was inspired by Dylan Thomas's writing shed

One of the most famous modern shedworkers Roald Dahl was inspired to build his own garden office (pictured top) to escape the distractions of family life following a trip to see Dylan Thomas's writing hut (pictured above) in Wales.

In an interview with the BBC (which you can see here)Dahl's widow Felicity said:

"He realised he had to have a space of his own in the garden away from the children and the noise and the general domesticity and he remembered that Dylan had felt the same. And so he went down to Wales to look at Dylan's writing hut and, like everybody, fell in love with it. He built it exactly to the same proportions as Dylan's hut, the same roof, one skin of brick. Of course Dylan's hut was a garage originally, whereas Roald had nothing, it was an empty space that he built on."

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Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.