Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Merry Christmas to all readers of Shedworking


“Yo ho, my boys,” said Fezziwig. “No more work to-night. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer. Let’s have the shutters up,” cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, “before a man can say Jack Robinson.”
Shutters open again on December 29. Annual Shedworking awards announced December 31. ------------ Apologies for the delay in the awards - festive IT issues struck the staff down so these will be postponed until the end of January

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Wikihouse studio


WikiHouse describes itself as an "open source construction system. A design commons for high-performance, low-energy homes that can be customised, printed and self-assembled. We are collaborating to put design tools and knowledge into the hands of everyone."

Rather excitingly the first WikiHouse kit is a garden office which is available to download and also to buy in the UK, designed by Architecture 00. It comes in at around 12sqm and can be delivered to your home as a CNC-printed kit with full instructions (Wikihouse suggests three or four people will take about three days to put it up). More details and instructions here. Well worth a long look. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of which do not require planning

Monday, December 22, 2014

Cabin in a rock



Inspired by a story by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, Antoine by Bureau A is a wooden cabin built inside a fake concrete rock, an alpine shelter, which they says is "a precarious 'Existenzminimum' somewhat subversive in its use where one can freely enter and hide. It contains the very basic architectural elements - fire place, bed, table, stool, window - but demands to the visitor some risk taking as the rock hangs literally on the rock fall field."
Via those fine folk at dezeen
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Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.

Friday, December 19, 2014

Shed Quiz of the Year

Take part in the Shed of the year - end of the year Quiz A very jolly quiz from over at that other shed blog, embedded here using a clever bit of Uncle Wilco online magickery.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Shed decor: Shedworkers' bookshelf


A book to look out for in February next year, Shed Decor by Sally Coulthard (author of the excellent Shed Chic) promises to be an "inspirational guide to decorating and furnishing outdoor rooms and garden sheds" which will help us design, decorate and equip your shedworking space. According to Sally: "These important outdoor rooms deserve as much thought as any living space within the house."

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Homestead Timber Buildings - Manufacturers of Quality Timber Buildings

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Hush: Interior shedworking


The 'interior shedworking' folder is getting fatter and fatter. The latest addition is Hush by Freyja Sewell. The shell is cut from a piece of 10mm industrial wool felt and internal padding is made from recycled wool fibres, the by-product of the carpet industry.

"Wool is naturally flame retardant, breathable, durable and elastic," shes says. "It is also multi-climatic, meaning it is warm when the environment is cold and cool when it’s warm. It is of course biodegradable and so won’t clog up landfill after disposal. It is produced sustainably from animals out in the open, with each sheep producing a new fleece each year."


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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

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Egg-shaped beach huts


Egg-shaped shedlike atmospheres are all the rage at the moment. The latest is a beach hut design called Albang designed by Yoon Space Design and set up on a beach in Yangyang-gun in South Korea. They're carved - yes, carved - out of polystyrene.
Photos (by indiphos) at Dezeen
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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

Monday, December 15, 2014

Will 2015 be the year you start your own shedworking business?


If you haven't done so already, the latest report suggests that many of you will be taking the leap next year and starting a business from your garden office.

New research carried out by Angels Den UK’s largest 'business angel' network [disclaimer: its founders are friends of the Shedworking staff] reveals that more than one in ten people have put ‘starting my own business’ on their New Year’s resolutions list for 2015.

Although getting fitter, drinking less and losing weight unsurprisingly top the poll of nearly 2,000 people, 18 per cent said they were looking for a new job or a career change, and 11 per cent that they were planning to start their own business.

Of these, three quarters said that their plan was still at the 'just an idea' stage, but the other quarter had already begun the process of setting it up, such as obtaining a website domain name.

When asked what types of businesses they were planning to set up in the New Year, the top industries were:

1. Food/Drink- 16 per cent
2. Fashion - 13 per cent
3. IT- 8 per cent
4. Media- 5 per cent
5. Construction- 5 per cent

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

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Wrong kind of shed on the tracks

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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

Tuesday, December 09, 2014

How to keep your garden office tidy


 A useful little blog post by Jenna Spesard at Tumbleweed looks at 10 ways to keep your tiny house kitchen tidy. While not all the tips are appropriate for shedworkers, it's definitely worth a look as there are some useful ideas. For example, number 4 is all about considering high storage. "Having high shelves or hangings baskets can clear your counters and harness the underutilized space above your eye-line."
Image courtesy Notonthehighstreet.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of which do not require planning

Monday, December 08, 2014

Made in a shed: Mark Brend's new album






We've featured Devon-based musician, writer and shedworker Mark Brend and his work before on Shedworking and he has just released another album, Morrow (with Michael Paine), which was put together in his shed

Mark says the album references the mid-20th century British writer Phyllis Paul and shares with her novels an interest in the ambiguous territory between natural and supernatural. "Deploying piano, electric and acoustic guitar, flute, percussion, glockenspiel and organ with musique concrète textures and found sounds, we create a cryptic English pastoral noir, drawing variously on folk, evangelical hymns, jazz, Debussy and Maurice Deebank," he says.


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

Tuesday, December 02, 2014

The rise of the treehouse office


A nice piece by Tim Walker in The Independent  (disclaimer: they pay most of my mortgage) describes treehouses as the latest US property boom. "More and more treehouses are being built in the United States," says Tim, "not only for children but also as home offices, guest houses and tree-house resorts. Here's a snippet:
Over in Oregon, Michael Garnier, 66, the owner of the Out'n'About Treehouse Treesort, estimates that demand for parts from his mail-order treehouse supply business has doubled since 2013. "I've been selling parts for years but in the past year it's really exploded," he says.
Well worth a read (it's quite short). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of which do not require planning

Monday, December 01, 2014

Beach hut advent calendar enters seventh year


We've been covering the annual beach hut advent calendar in Brighton since it started seven years ago (see here for more details of past calendars), so we're delighted that Beyond Church has again been working hard to make it happen again in 2014. As in previous years, a different beach hut on the Hove esplanade will open its doors every night as Christmas approaches, each with an artistic festive surprise within. There's mince pies, warm drinks and almost certainly special guests every day between 5.30pm and 6.30pm, starting tonight with Hut 311. Good luck to all, and to all a good luck. --------------------------------------------------------------------
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Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.

Garden studio with its own golf course





After queries about heating and insulation, how to theme your garden office space is probably the most common issue raised by readers. Green Studios recently replaced an old swimming pool outhouse, with the new studio above which features a home cinema, pool changing facility, and a golf simulator.

"A golf simulator needs a flat wall for the video screen which doubles as the cinema screen, and a higher than normal ceiling height," explains Steve Warr from Green Studios. "To achieve this, we dug below ground level and then built the garden studio to the height permitted within local planning regulations. By digging down and building steps from the garden down into the studio, we created a room with a generous ceiling height of over three metres which makes it perfectly roomy for even the most enthusiastic of back swings." --------------------------------------------------------------------
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Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.