Garden offices add value to your property

Nice piece in the Daily Telegraph by Caroline McGhie argues - quite rightly - that not only is working from home an excellent idea, but that it also adds value to your home if you come to sell it (the figure often quoted rather vaguely is 5% and there's nothing more concrete here although there are a couple of examples of loft extensions). Although it looks at homeworking in general, there's plenty about shedworking in there too. Here's a snippet:

"So home offices are popping up in gardens and extensions all over the country. In London, where prices are sky-high and space is short, workspace adds to value and buyer-appeal... Home offices also make a house more flexible to changing family needs, known as “future-proofing”. They can be converted into granny flats or homes for boomerang children when the time comes"

Well worth a browse - it also includes a couple of galleries featuring marvellous garden offices and properties for sale with garden offices including Rose Cottage in Deal, Kent, pictured above, on with Bright & Bright for £385,000. ----------------------------------------------------

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

Tunsta: garden office + storage

Over the last few years, garden offices seem to have come increasingly frequently with traditional storage areas. Indeed, Garden2office has just introduced a new model, the Tunsta, to join its Sportskabin range. The buildings are an L-shape with the smaller 'leg' specifically set aside to be an insulated storage area. Almost any size and window lay-out can be made to order and fully installed models will cost from around £16,000. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Cozy Cottage

Small houses are very much the shedworkingesque hot trend of 2014. Here's one of our favourite so far, a very recent build from Tiny House UK. --------------------------------------------------------

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

Japanese teahouseworking

Shedworking's literary editor Sarah Salway has been visiting the gardens at Bere Hill in Hampshire  where she spotted this marvellous Japanese teahouse built by Australian sculptors, Paul Jamieson and Rohan Ward. A lovely spot for some light shedworking although Sarah does describe it as "a perfect spot for daydreaming" too. You should also buy her new book Digging up Paradise which is excellent. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Homestead Timber Buildings - Manufacturers of Quality Timber Buildings

The Northern Block: co-shedworking

Digital type foundry The Northern Block has called on shedworking specialists 3rdSpace to design a new headquarters to accommodate their creative team.

The resulting building takes the form of a black-clad timber and glass structure, with a 5m long floating desk surface running the length of the interior, overlooking Northumberland countryside. The brief sought out to create a space that would be at one with values and process of type design (to provide a functional and inspirational environmen.

The Northern Block director, Jonathan Hill, was also inspired by the principles of compact Japanese workspaces that made efficient use of space and natural light.

 "These spaces are really about professional craft or personal interest," said Ben Couture of 3rdSpace. "We have used our system to create a library for a literary professor, a furniture workshop for an author and a home office for an architect. They all begin with the same core components, but each comes to life and tells its own story when they are personalised with the objects or tools of each user, as well as bespoke internal elements."

For this project, a light-filled interior is internally lined with white-tinted birch plywood set between Douglas fir post and beams. The expressed structure sets a rhythm to the space and offers a reassuring symmetry. In addition to the custom-made cantilever desk, a laminated plywood wall-mounted storage unit displays graphic design books and journals in open shelving, and conceals lever arch files in the sliding door unit below. Magnetic glass white board panels allow an area for the designers to pin up inspirational images and draw out sample ideas at large scale.

The building was delivered to site, prefabricated in panels, and took just five days to fully assemble.

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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

Shed of the Year finalists announced

The longlist finalists for each category in the Shed of the Year 2014 have been announced on Shedblog and a fine selection they are. In the garden office entry, we particularly like Jamie Dix's Little Thatch but the other finalists are also well worth checking out
Rapod Garden Office - Toni Keers's shedworking atmosphere features a unique type of cladding
The Poki Shed - Huw Grantham's recycled/upcycled garden office has a VW camper bench seat
Denison Garden Studio - a present for the owner’s mothers 50^th birthday.

They'll all have to go some to beat the teapot though... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Shed of the Year: TV times

Dates for your diary. The Shed of the Year miniseries (Amazing Spaces: Shed of the Year) is going to be a three-parter on Channel 4, starting at 8pm on July 24 (including the unique category). --------------------------------------------------------------------
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Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.

Entwurf Gartenhaus

Designer Thomas Paschke has been in touch to share his intriguing garden office design. As he puts it: "Gartenhäuser im Grünen, in denen einer beruflichen Tätigkeit nachgegangen wird, liegen im Trend" (working in garden offices is a definite trend). ----------------------------------------------------

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

Beach hut news roundup

Beach huts are rising faster in value than prime London property according to the Daily Telegraph. The paper's Richard Dyson estimates (with some reservations) that beach hut prices have risen 53 per cent in the last two years, double the jump in Mayfair and Belgravia. He even suggests that some Mudeford huts have gone up 3,100 per cent over the last 40 years.

Meanwhile, the East Lindsey Target reports that beach huts on the Sutton-on-Sea promenade can now be used as shops. Two huts - 28 and 29 - have already been rented out as arts and crafts galleries. One hut will also be used as an information kiosk for visitors to the area.

Elsewhere, the Lytham St Annes Express covers the decision to approve plans for 30 beach huts which could bring up to 25,000 visitors a year to St Annes. Stuart Robertson, from 
applicants St Annes Beach Huts (pictured above), told the paper: “It’s not been an easy journey for me to try and get the beach huts established but I believe there is something magical about them." The decision will triple the number of huts. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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