Songs from the Shed calls it a day

Sad news from Jon Earl who has been running the excellent Songs from the Shed for the last decade. Here's the news from Jon:

After 10 music filled years I have decided to close the doors of the shed. I feel that it has run it's course. When I first started on this adventure I had no idea where it would take me and the friends I would make. I hope that the shed has in some way helped those that have played on their way, I know that numerous session sites took inspiration from this humble old shed. I have a festival with the Curzon Cinema in May and am introducing acts to the PRS at Glastonbury this year these will be my last shed adventures Thank you for all your support over the years, It's been a blast.

There are hundreds of excellent acoustic sessions on the Songs from the Shed YouTube page but here's a taster, Steve 'Show of Hands' Knightely:

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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.

Musical instrument repair workshop

An interesting garden office build from The Stable Company, a shedworking environment for a repairer of musical instruments whose business needed more space than his spare bedroom could offer. A key part of the brief was that the new space needed to have lots of storage space for tools and equipment to prevent needless journeys to the house during the working day.

Bespoke features include a separate lavatory room, large windows to provide plenty of natural light (these are also reflective to stop people looking inside the room from the outside), and reinforced pad foundations to support a heavy lathe used regularly by the client. ----------------------------------------------------

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

Beach hut advent calendar 2016

Beyond Church has been running its excellent annual beach hut advent calendar again this year in Brighton and Hove (see here for how we've been reporting it for the last half a dozen years). There's only a few days to catch the last remaining huts, so do nip along. Full details here on their website.

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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

The end of the home office?

Lloyd Alter at Treehugger poses a pertinent question - is the home office dying? Here's what he says about the state of play in the USA:

Now, people are working from everywhere around the home from kitchen counter to sofa, especially the younger home buyers who are used to working in coffee shops. One survey showed that in California, “only a quarter of buyers born in the 1990s want a formal home office.” Builders and designers are instead creating “flexible spaces and workspace nooks”.

 And Patrick Clark at Bloomberg points out that: 

The home office has lost enough cachet that, as of the end of August, the share of listings on real estate site Zillow that make special mention of one decreased by 20 percent from the previous year across the U.S., according to data compiled for Bloomberg Businessweek. Those rooms might still exist, but the numbers at least signal that real estate agents see them as less of a selling point than they once did.

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Christmas garden office sign

Loving my new sign - perfect in my garden office #feelingfestive #vo pic.twitter.com/AEtw2dLF04

— Mel's British Voice (@MelsBritishVOs) December 16, 2016

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Garden office 2017

#HoneyIShrunkTheGardenRoom Hopefully where my garden office is going next year! With last years real xmas tree! pic.twitter.com/90kARLO1kz

— Andy Bannister (@andybannister) December 15, 2016

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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.

Stained glass shed

Technically this is a greenhouse, but it's certainly a shedlike building (and arguably almost a chapel, in fact its creators call it a 'horticultural temple') in which it would be wonderful to work. A wonderful piece of work using repurposed 18th and 19th century stained glass from horticultural installation artists Heywood & Condie, The Greenhouse has been on show at Jerwood Gallery in Hastings and most recently in the forecourt of the Royal British Society of Sculptors in London. Here's what they say about it:

"The walls of The Greenhouse are adorned with reconfigurations of these ancient symbols and patterns which humans have used for thousands of years to celebrate the cycle of life from times when human, plant and animal fertility was the central focus of sacred concern.  Once inside, the greenhouse is a sanctuary and a space for introspection which demands a meditation on image, concept and nature endlessly reflected in the infinity floor. The forms and images at play spring from the eternal themes of birth, death, regeneration and harmony with nature."

They add that "a digital folkloric spirit inhabits the space, symbolising the act of gardening as a transcendent activity" and that it is a place of sanctuary and introspection (something which all shedworkers know plenty about).

Via The Enduring Gardener with a h/t to The Garden Escape ----------------------------------------------------

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

Yoga studio garden office

An interesting build by The Garden Escape for yoga teacher Catherine Adams who was looking for a shedworking solution for her home-based yoga business. Here's what she told them:

"I wanted to create a space at home where I could teach small groups and private classes. Building a studio in my back garden was the perfect way to give my clients and I some privacy away from a busy gym and give me the opportunity to set up the room exactly how I wanted it."

Catherine now runs several classes a week from the studio and her clients are very much sold on the surroundings which are fully insulated (there is also underfloor heating) so nice and warm even when it's freezing outside. 

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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

Shed office of the future

An excellent piece by the always readable Lloyd Alter on Treehugger suggests that the shed or tiny home could be the blueprint for the office of the future, rather than the coffee shop or other third place location. He cites the recent office designs by Frovi including the Huddle Shed and Huddle Shed Rustic (above) which the company describes as an 'iconic haven' which features

• A revolutionary design to create a genuine ‘talking point’
• Highly effective acoustic properties for noise cancellation
• A fully clad Rustic design or entirely upholstered
• Monitor mount and integrated power and data
• Optional LED lighting for the roof
• Commercial-grade materials for practicality

Lloyd also points to Frovi's oak-framed Jig Arbour (below) which has been acoustically designed to reduce noise, comes with a deep-foamed sprung seat, and optional contrasting buttons.

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Garden office in subtropical garden

A remarkable office for interior styling specialists Indigo Jungle in Brisbane by architects Marc&Co whose brief was the wonderful "design a small office space in a subtropical garden". This must be in the running for the Best View From A Garden Office Award this year. Here's what they say about it:

"Rather than starting with an office design, we began thinking about a shack in the landscape. Shacks are often remote and they are small because they are inhabited occasionally. In the cold, a shack is to retain warmth and protect from the cold. In the tropics it may provide shelter from the rain and somewhere dry to cook. The form usually expresses the use, a steep pitch to shed the snow or large overhangs to shade. They are generally modest and available to all demographics. They offer retreat from urban life and a simple relationship to nature. In an urban garden setting, perhaps the office could be more like a shack, more ephemeral."

Outside, the studio has dark zig-zag cladding. Inside, its deliberately tall and narrow 3m x 8m interior is all white.

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

Telephone box shedworking

We've talked before about repurposing the UK's red telephone boxes for use as shedworking space and great work is being done in this area by The Red Kiosk Company founded by Eddie Ottewell and Steve Beekens which is a national retail chain operating out of these unused iconic gems. The first two (both food and drink businesses) were established on New Road, near Pavilion Gardens in Brighton 2014 and now the idea has been taken up by phone repair outlet Lovefone.

In their box shop in Greenwich (291 Greenwich High Road SE10 8NA, opposite The Mitre pub (10am-5pm, Monday to Friday) you can get your iPhone or Nexus smartphone (or tablet) repaired - they estimate 80% of repairs can be done on the spot but they will also send them away to their repair lab if they need more work . They also offer a free charging service. The plan is to open another half a dozen in London and build up to 35 locations in the next 18 months, including cities outside the capital such as Birmingham, Brighton and Leeds.
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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.

Minim: Garden office on wheels

The always excellent Lloyd Alter at Treehugger draws our attention to the Minim WorkSpace, inspired by the Minim House mobile micro home - it's not merely a garden office, it's a licensed trailer, so as they say you can "park it anywhere you can legally park a car for an extended period". This is especially handy if you want some mobility but don't want an office that looks like a shepherd's hut.

It's  80 square feet and includes keyless entry, a sit/standing desk and conference table, decent-sized sofa, noiseless air conditioing, LED lighting, a microwave, sink, and fridge. You can plug it into standard outlets or there is a solar option for really remote working. You could end up spending a lot of time in here.

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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 insulation in winter

This #gardenroom is so well insulated it doesn't need heating on sunny winter days https://t.co/x0dGzWZBvV #solar pic.twitter.com/go10cRlK9h

— Garden Escape (@gardenescape) December 6, 2016

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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

Garden office security: Blink

Shedworkers looking to secure their garden office may be interested in Blink, a wire-free, home and garden office security and HD video monitoring system that has just become available in the UK via its free Blink Home Monitor app for iOS and Android devices.

Blink claims to offer "quick and simple do-it-yourself installation" as well as HD video technology with motion and temperature sensors. When Blink detects motion, it immediately sends a push notification alert and HD quality video to the user’s smartphone so that they can instantly see who is at the door or wandering around their garden office or home. The system is entirely accessible via the Blink App, giving users the flexibility to arm/disarm, live stream video, and check status remotely, anytime and from anywhere.
 

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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

Shedworking's youngest reader?

My #shedworking #dengineer plugging your book @shedworking pic.twitter.com/BRxxjDLMiq

— Emma Balch (@dobleMdesign) December 2, 2016

Seth Balch, aged 8, already has fine taste. He will obviously go far. --------------------------------------------------------------------
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What is a shed?

A lovely piece by Tara Ward at The Spinoff looks at the question that dogs the Shed of the Year competition each year. She argues that to make it to the finals, a shed must be unique, include interesting historical features, enjoy a pleasant outlook, and - controversially - be able to survive nuclear fallout. Here's a snippet:

Dylan Thomas’ writing hut sits perched on a cliff in Wales, enveloped by the calming serenity of the sky and sea. In Scotland, a boat wheelhouse shed gazes out into the wild North Sea and feasts upon a view of dolphins and submarines. It’s so inspiring and beautiful I want to cry tears of tiny cabin joy. My shed looks onto a brick wall. I imagine it’s like being in prison. Probably not to everyone’s taste, but neither is a shed driving ninety miles an hour down a racetrack.

Well worth a browse. --------------------------------------------------------

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

Tree Houses Reimagined: New Blue Forest book

It's been an excellent year for books about garden offices, sheds, and other shedlike structures and as 2016 heads to a close there's another marvellous title, from treehouse specialists Blue Forest, Tree Houses Reimagined subtitled Luxurious Retreats for Tranquility and Play. There are about 250 colour photographs of 28 of their many superb builds (see rest of this post for some examples included in the book), as well as floor plans, drawings, architectural designs and not yet published future tree house projects, plus the interesting story of how the company was founded. 

Here's some more information from the publisher:

Enter the world of fairy-tale towers, whimsical stairways, crow’s nests, zip lines, and suspended rope bridges. Take pleasure in the details of hand-split oak shingles, thatched roofs, and cedar tongue-and-groove interiors. Made of sustainably sourced materials, Blue Forest’s magical sanctuaries fit snugly between trees and branches—often incorporating them into the building itself—and sit lightly on the land.

 

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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.

Minima Moralia: Rooftop garden office

Minima Moralia is a garden office workspace which has been designed for use on rooftops as well as back gardens. Designed by London-based architects Jonas Prišmontas and Tomaso Boano, it attempts to deal with the live-work conundrum using a steel frame and folding opening canopy. Here's what they say about it:

Mimima Moralia is a critical installation, a manifesto of social hope with no political intention. Minima Moralia offers tiny, cellular pop-up spaces to be inhabited by designers, sculptors, painters, musicians and other creatives. It is a naked minimalistic structure and comprises a structural skeleton, a roof, a floor and a translucent external skin that is able to communicate and establish a holistic relationship with its surroundings. Acting as a window into an artistic mind, the space allows a glimpse into the creative processes and the crafting abilities that take place inside. 

Exhibited earlier this year at the London Festival of Architecture on Dalston Roof Park,

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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

The pros and cons of tiny houses

It has become an established way of living now in the USA, but there's increasing interest in the tiny house movement in the UK. Generally, people are pretty positive about the experience of living small, but as in all things, not everybody believes it's a great idea. Recently putting the case for it being a 'good thing' (though also in a very balanced way recognising it is not necessarily for everyone) is Nione Meakin in The Guardian ('We moved to a tiny house to get more room – and it worked'). Here's a snippet: 

Limited indoor space means more time outside and in the two allotments they have taken on across the road. “We’re far more aware of the seasons than we ever were in London and the fresh air, exercise and intimacy is making Tim and me the most content and fulfilled we’ve been in our adult lives,” says Laura. “We don’t need to earn as much as we used to, so we don’t have to spend as much time working as we used to. We have time together as a family.” 

Writer and filmmaker Chuck Wendig on his terribleminds blog is not so convinced and has written 'An open letter to tiny house hunters'. He itemises his concerns including this (my asterisks for poor language):

Fourth, your bed is going to be a claustrophobic morgue-drawer nightmare. The ceiling will be three feet above your head and that’s only if the mattress is of the same material they make diapers out of. If it is a proper mattress, your nose is probably going to be pressed against the top margins of your tiny house. Beds, actual human beds, are ******* huge. Perhaps extravagantly so, I dunno, but we have left the era where we could comfortably sleep on a pile of reeds on the hard rocky earth and now we sleep on giant mattress configurations that are basically as big as half of a tiny house. If you want to practice what it’s like sleeping in a tiny house, sleep in one of your drawers, or in the crawlspace under your existing normal-sized home.

Both pieces are well worth a read if you are thinking going down the tiny house route.
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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

Garden office with table football

Great photo by one of our lovely clients in Buckinghamshire. SIPS Garden Office with a Football Table for relaxation during lunch hours! pic.twitter.com/akalgiQCwc

— SIPS Garden Rooms (@SIPSGardenRooms) November 26, 2016

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