George Bernard Shaw relaxes in his writing hut

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

How much does a green roof weigh?

Many shedworkers are keen to install a green roof, but it's a subject that requires a lot of thinking, not least the weight of it all so that you don't suddenly wake up to a buried garden office. There's a good article about the ins and outs of the subject by Simon Blackham at the Sig Design and Technology site running through the various options (with pictures, which makes it even more useful). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Homestead Timber Buildings - Manufacturers of Quality Timber Buildings

Bag a beach hut

A nice roundup of beach huts for sale around the UK by Kristy Gray for Homes & Property. Well worth a browse to put you in the sunny holiday mood. ----------------------------------------------------------

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

Isabel Allende: shedworker

Writer Isabel Allende - The House of the Spirits, Zorro, Paula - is also a shedworker, writing away in what she calls her 'casita' (trans: 'little house') at her home in California. Sadly, there don't seem to be any images of it, but her garden office is certainly a central part of her working life.

"I try not to work on Sundays," she told the New York Times, "but if I am in my writing time (Jan. 8 to around May), I may sneak to my casita to work if we have no guests. The casita was meant to be the pool house, but it ended up being my studio... I have written several historical novels that required a lot of research, and in that case I did most of the reading in my 'casita', where I write."

Writing in the book Why We Write, a compilation of famous writers' writing habits, she explains that: "On January eighth I walk seventeen steps from the kitchen to the little pool house that is my office. It’s like a journey to another world. It’s winter, it’s raining usually. I go with my umbrella and the dog following me. From those seventeen steps on, I am in another world and I am another person. I go there scared. And excited. And disappointed — because I have a sort of idea that isn’t really an idea. The first two, three, four weeks are wasted. I just show up in front of the computer. Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn’t show up invited, eventually she just shows up."

Interestingly, there is no phone, email or fax link in her shedlike atmosphere, and the only person allowed to disturb her while she is at work is her husband. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Homestead Timber Buildings - Manufacturers of Quality Timber Buildings

Annual staff holidays

Shedworking is off to the beach for an icecream and a ride on a donkey in a funny hat. Normal shedservice will be resumed in a bit. A very happy holiday to you all. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Fibonacci garden office

As today is 5/8/13, it seems appropriate to look at Paul Hurst's fascinating garden office design for his yet-to-be-built shedworking atmosphere. "I wanted to get the most efficient use possible from our fairly small garden," he says "but with a building that wasn't bland."

It's certainly not bland and I'd highly recommend you click the link above to read why he went for a Fibonaccci-themed garden office... We'll bring you photos of the actual build later in the year once everything is underway. -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.

What does your garden office smell like?

An unusual question but one that was posed to shedworking author Joanne Harris by Nathalie Atkinson at canada.com who asked the novelist if she ever deliberately scented the room to suit what she was writing. Here's her reply:

"My shed has lots of strong ambient smells anyway. Because the inside is made of green oak it smells very strongly of wood and I sometimes burn things in there like sage and candles and things,” she said. When she wants to remind herself more explicitly, “I’ve got so many boxes of powders and cedar wood and sandalwood! And I have some suppliers of incenses that send them over from North Africa, which are nicer than the ones you just buy in hippie shops, which all end up smelling more or less the same."

What does your garden office smell like? ----------------------------------------------------------

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