Studio Shed's solar-powered garden office

Colorado-based Studio Shed has teamed up with SolSource to design and install an energy-efficient garden office in the backyard of Gail Siegel’s home in Lafayette, Colorado, where she runs a jewellery business (specialising in precious metals). The move to shedworking is a particularly interesting one since Gail's work requires working with fire but on the other hand Gail’s home is a 100-year-old timber-frame miner’s cottage which is not conducive to flammable projects. Here's what she said:

"I spent 18 months thoroughly weighing my options between renting a space for $500-$600/month, selling my home which I love and purchasing a larger home or building a backyard shed."

There are lots of ecofriendly elements to the build (FSC timber, low-VOC paint, etc), but what's most intriguing about this 14’ x 10’ x 9’ garden office is its solar power. SolSource custom designed and installed a solar system to fit the 11’x 16’ studio roof: the 9’ high pitched roof is outfitted with a 1.9 kilowatt system featuring eight 235-watt modules and microinverters that will power both the studio and indeed Gail’s home.
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Thursday posts are sponsored by Atelier garden studios which are sustainable, stylish, flexible, functional and future proofed

Home Studio Therapy Room

A nice example of the design process from Extra Rooms whose client wanted a new garden office built along similar design lines to a summerhouse already in place (with a few alterations such as filling the alcover fully and without the open porch). So pictured above is the old summerhouse, the room in Extra Rooms' workshop nearing completion and customer approval, and finally the finished product in situ which is now used all year round as a consultation room and home office.
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Thursday posts are sponsored by Atelier garden studios which are sustainable, stylish, flexible, functional and future proofed

Riverside garden offices

We received a query via Twitter asking for information about building a garden office close to water (specifically a river). If you've got a garden office in this position or if you're a garden office supplier who has experience of this kind of a build, please do leave a comment below about the pros and cons or get in touch.
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Garden Room Company rebrands (and launches Eco)

The York-based company has now brought all its garden rooms under The Stable Company brand as it mothballs the Garden Room Company brand. However they are still very much continuing to design and build high quality, bespoke timber garden offices and buildings. Indeed, they have just launched their third garden room range called The Eco which is similar in design to The Mono and has a sedum green roof as standard. Pictured above is an Eco in Orpington, Kent used as a music room by its violinist owner who teaches students inside: it is 4.32m wide x 3.81m deep internally, and 4.71m wide x 4.20m deep externally.
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Tuesday posts are sponsored by The Home Office Company, manufacturers of unique garden rooms since 1998. Now in 10 exciting new colours. Click here for more details.

Look inside a garden office

A nice short video from Booths Garden Studios inside one of their 7320mm x 3660mm LoLine models which also reminds us that shedworking need not be a solitary occupation.
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Tuesday posts are sponsored by The Home Office Company, manufacturers of unique garden rooms since 1998. Now in 10 exciting new colours. Click here for more details.

Marjo's Studio, the Grange

This conversion of a 1960s garage at the end of a large garden in the Grange, Edinburgh, into a new garden studio for working from home was beautifully done by bergmark architects. It is also used as guest accommodation since it has its own kitchenette and shower room. Work included replacing the flat roof with a pitched zink roof to provide a double height main space. The exterior is clad with anthracite grey eternit panels and features large sliding doors and rooflights as well as an underfloor heating system and a woodburning stove.


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

mybuilder.com: established in a shedlike atmosphere

MyBuilder describes itself as "an online marketplace that brings builders and homeowners together". Putting a job up on the site is free which makes its money largely by charging builders when they successfully secure work via the website: you can find shed and garage builders for example by clicking here. Tradesmen are rated on their workmanship by clients which hopefully makes it easier to find decent builders. And where did stonemason Ryan Notz first set up the business? In a shedlike garage in Bristol.



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

Garden office + house for sale in Shrewsbury

An idyllic garden office with fully glazed aspect to the rising sun and a golden view of the top of the tallest Doric column in the world - and with a luxury apartment attached - is now available to buy for £365,000. The office is broadband connected with power supply & heating, and comes with a 2 bedroom luxury apartment attached. They are located in Shrewsbury, the county town of Shropshire, a hotbed of home-based entrepreneurs where networking is a happy pastime and these mobile business people enjoy some of the highest levels of open space per head of population in the country. The cultural life is lively with the left bank of the county a home to a talented tribe of contemporary artists, here for the inspiration and quality of life the county provides. Jelly co-working groups abound and the lucky purchaser of this Home Office would not be short of entrepreneurial company. Shedworking can personally vouch for the seller's credentials. Click here for details.


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

Shedworking on Facebook

Several readers have asked for a more substantial Shedworking presence on Facebook (we've been there for a while but in a fairly dormant state) so, happy to oblige as ever, that's exactly what we're starting to do. You can see the official Shedworking page (as well as the completely unedited 'Community' page which brings together everything shedworkingesque across Facebook). It's early days but there are some nice photos and videos to get things going. If you'd like to contribute to it or have any tip top ideas for developing it, please let us know.


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Venice on Water

If you want to mix some shedworkingesque holiday action and Venice then here's the very thing, a luxury two-bedroom houseboat berthed in the Marina di Porte Grandi in Quarto d’Altino which can be used for limited navigation inside the lagoon without needing a pilot’s license. It's part of a project called Venice on Water (click to see more pictures) which aims to build 10 of them over the next few years in Malta: pictured above is the first, called Mdina Venezia which is 10m x 4.5m, features a light aluminium hull and a rooftop sundeck and lounge area. More details at Times of Malta
Photo and alert by Robin Peach


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For great value home insurance get a home insurance quote online from Tesco Bank. Every Little Helps.

The Garden Cube

Only really useful for sunny shedworking, the Garden Cube from Chris Nangle Furniture Design would nevertheless be a great spot for the occasional shedworker. Made from sustainable native burnt green oak or western red cedar.

Haus IK_13

This lovely self-sufficient, split-level shedworking space in an old apple tree meadow in Schleswig-Holstein is where artist Uwe Paduck works. Designed by Mitto Architekten to resemble an old barn and called "Haus IK_13" it has an artist's studio, kitchen, bathroom, mezzanine, and bedroom. Uwe calls it "modest". It covers, on both floors, a total of 55 square meters of living space,
Via Muuuz. Thanks to urbanbike for the alert


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New artist's studio in St Albans

It's always a pleasure to report on new garden office builds in the home town of Shedworking so we were delighted to hear from Decorated Shed that they have just finished work on an artist's studio for St Albans-based designer Stephen Wragg. Stephen and his wife Esther run Wragg Art House which includes painting, drawing, sculpture, graphic design for print and web media, photography and cartography.


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Friday posts are sponsored by Extraspace, the flat-packed, man-portable expandable garden building experts. Click here for more details

Little Redonda

Little Redonda is the lovely garden office belonging to Edinburgh-based Secret Gardens, a garden design and bespoke garden buildings business run by Carolyn Grohmann. Carolyn has an excellent page on the site detailing the project from first thoughts to final construction. Here's a snippet:

Our garden studio project started out as an effort to solve an increasingly common domestic problem: the explosive combination of two young children, a dog and a husband and wife who both work from home. Noise levels within our home are unlikely to drop in the next ten to fifteen years and 'moving into the garden shed', as my husband still puts it, began to look increasingly like the most appealing solution. However, the project slowly evolved into something much more interesting and inspiring than the simple upgrading of a shed.

It's certainly got good ecofriendly credentials. The timber is all FSC certified with larch cladding and oak decking, while the windows and doors were made locally. The floor is reclaimed from a Glasgow college. Insulation is sheep's wool and there is a green sedum roof (pictured above in full bloom).


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Thursday posts are sponsored by Atelier garden studios which are sustainable, stylish, flexible, functional and future proofed

What is a garden office?

Generally we tend to be fairly vague about what features a garden office needs to have to be able to call itself just that, one of which is usually that it needs to be a standalone structure in the garden or yard. But here's something interesting, a new offering from The Home Office Company which is a home office attached to a house, offering a viable alternative to the standard conservatory: the key benefits are no brick upstand required or deep footings (and, some might add, no sunlight beating through the glass roof, as all their roofs are insulated panels). What do readers think?


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Thursday posts are sponsored by Atelier garden studios which are sustainable, stylish, flexible, functional and future proofed

The Vespiary: now up and running

We featured Audra Loyal's marvellous Vespiary from where she planned to run her bookbinding and bookmaking business and were delighted to hear from her that she is now up and running. Audra was featured in the local paper The Missoulian in a nice piece by Keila Szpaller which is well worth a browse. Here's a snippet:

The shop's footprint is 12 feet by 12 feet, and the interior space is 10 feet by 10 feet. Even though the "Garden Office" behind their Alder Street home is small, Loyal said it's a much better place to restore books than the dining room table had been. "I would lose an hour a day just setting up and cleaning up," said Loyal, technically a "conservation technician." "And I never felt really good about how I was storing things." Despite it's miniature look, The Vespiary is roomy enough. It holds Loyal's books, the personal ones and the ones she's fixing for clients, as well as her tools of the trade.

It's certainly a decent size and features a sofa for clients, a loft/guest room as well as Montana sheep's wool insulation.


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

Charlie Dalton/Smart Garden Offices on Radio Suffolk now

Charlie is talking now about the delights of shedworking to Lesley Dolphin on Radio Suffolk (he's just very kindly called me the Godfather of shedworking). You can listen (or listen again) here.

BluePrint Home Offices (screencast)

Have a look around yourself at BluePrint Home Offices.


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Tuesday posts are sponsored by The Home Office Company, manufacturers of unique garden rooms since 1998. Now in 10 exciting new colours. Click here for more details.

An average week as a shedworker

Phil Sorrell is a shedworker whose company Where did the tiger go? develops web sites for a wide range of businesses and community groups. At his View From The Shed blog he analyses his working week and presents the findings in an intriguing and very readable way. Here's a snippet:

This week I have got back into the habit of tracking my time for the vast majority of my working day. I find having a timer ticking on my screen helps improve my focus, increases the amount of time billed to clients, and helps me improve the accuracy of my quotes. I thought it might be interesting to share how a freelancer spends their time during an average week.

See the details here.


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Garden office garden: before and after

A rather splendid makeover by Sprout Garden Design & Landscaping, an awardwinning garden design and landscaping company based in Richmond upon Thames specialising in designing and building small gardens, courtyard spaces and roof terraces.


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