Friday, January 29, 2021

Kate Cooke: shedworker


Sheffield-based potter Kate Cooke talks about her work and her garden studio (pictured above) in an excellent interview on Folksy. Kate's handmade stoneware pottery (pictured below) is all made in her environmentally-friendly studio, a repurposed garden shed, and is inspired by the Peak District landscape around her. "Making pottery involves lots of stages, " she says, "often with critical drying time between each step, so it’s really handy having my studio space at home in the garden." Well worth reading and you can visit her shop via the links above.

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Thursday, January 28, 2021

The Garden Studio by Anna Alma-Tadema


An 1886-7 watercolour by British artist Anna Alma-Tadema (1867 - 1943) called The Garden Studio. Anna was the daughter of the Dutch painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. It shows the garden office painting studio at their home at 17 Grove End Road, St John's Wood, London, which they both used while the house was undergoing rather spectacular refurbishment. The blue and white Delft plate top left is a reference to their Dutch background, and the bust next to the open door is of Lawrence. British Art Studies has an interesting article on the family's studio houses.

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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.

Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Alix Harrow: shedworker


It's almost impossible to keep up with all the new garden office builds springing up at the moment, but here's one that really caught our eye. It's the new writing shed belonging to Kentucky-based novelist Alix Harrow. It sums up one of the pieces of advice we always give to proto-shedworkers asking for advice about size, that it's important to make your garden office the size you want, not the size that other people require since, in the nicest possible way, it's all about you. So while Alix's may be smaller than most readers' builds, it's perfect for her. It's one of the most appealing garden offices we've seen for a while.

It cost about $850 to build, using salvaged windows and tin, and the whole thing was designed and put together by Alix and her family. It's insulated but there's no electricity, with warmth supplied via a propane heater. Interestingly, it has been placed deliberately out of wifi range.

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Wednesday’s posts are sponsored by Norwegian Log Buildings  - Log cabins and garden buildings for a better quality of life. Click here for more details.

Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Clutterbuck Lodge artist's studio


Entries are already coming in for the Shed of the Year 2021 competition. One of our early favourites is Clutterbuck Lodge in the Cabin/Summerhouse category, owned by Martin Gabbutt who lives in the foothills of the Pennines. Not only is it a lovely shape, it's made almost completely from recycled furniture which Martin buys at auction. More images at the links above.

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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, January 25, 2021

New garden offices for Cate Blanchett and Rosamund Pike


It seems that everybody is getting in on the shedworking trend in lockdown. Latest to the garden office game is actor Cate Blanchett who has recently got planning permission to build her shedlike atmosphere on the grounds of her estate in East Sussex. It will include a meditation room and studio, as well as a small gallery to hang her art collection, because as her planning agent is quoted as saying: “They are creative people and it is beneficial for them to have a place to work that is tranquil and inspires through the beauty of the art, architecture and landscape setting.” 

An interesting point to note is that to build the new office suite - pictured above - she needs to knock down a derelict cottage and shed but that these are home to a bat colony so she must take steps to house them (in bat boxes or via a special bat loft) to fulfil the terms of the permission.

Also currently undergoing the planning process is fellow actor Rosamund Pike who wants to build a garden office with "retractable letterbox window" (not quite sure what that actually is) in the back garden of her home in London. According to the application, she requires "more amenable, useable and flexible space in and around the private, though overshadowed, rear garden". 

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Sunday, January 24, 2021

Does the spread of garden offices threaten cities?

Well, The Economist seems to think so. Here's a snippet:

Urban scholars... are busy trying to work out whether the rise in home-working that has occurred during the covid-19 pandemic will endure when the virus ebbs. If it does, many service jobs in cities, from baristas to taxi drivers, will disappear. Public-transport systems will struggle. The value of city-centre property will tank. The shed boom makes that outcome more likely. A white-collar worker who has tried to work from the kitchen table for the past nine months might be keen to return to the office. A worker who has an insulated garden shed with Wi-Fi will be less so...

Image courtesy Plankbridge

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Friday, January 22, 2021

Tini despacho garden office



A lovely garden office from Spanish architects delavegacanolasso who are also using it to enter the tiny house market (despacho means office in English). The studio is build of prefabricated modules around a Corten Steel frame. It's lined with poplar wood and insulated with recycled cotton. It's all made in Spain and is dropped off on site fully furnished - with kitchen furniture, cabinets and worktops - and good to go.

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

Thursday, January 21, 2021

Garden office news roundup

Unsurprisingly, given the latest lockdown, garden offices and shedworking are right back at the top of the news agenda. Here's a roundup of some of the latest articles in the media which are of interest: 

* Home office builder hit by skills shortage - despite enjoying a booming trade in sales, SMART is having problems recruiting a garden office installer

* How to create a garden office (£) - Katrina Burroughs takes a look at a range of garden offices and shepherds' huts on the market

* I got cabin fever in lockdown so I built my own beach hut - Kevin Rushby talks about his lockdown build and also takes an interesting look around other small cabins around the world

* How to install a home office in your garden and boost the value of your property (£) - Does what it says on the tin plus a nice DIY case study from Brixon, London

* How much will your new garden office cost? - A handy breakdown

Image courtesy Modern Garden Rooms

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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.

 

Wednesday, January 20, 2021

William Wordsworth's moss hut garden office



On a tour of Scotland in 1803, poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy saw a building Dorothy described as a “hay-stack scooped out”. It was a simple circular, domed wooden hut, lined with ‘fog’, the Scots language term for moss.When they got back to their Dove Cottage home in the Lake District, they built their own version with marvellous views over the fells and it was here that they entertained and William wrote poetry, including his masterpiece The Prelude. Like the hut they had seen in Scotland, it was lined with moss and covered outside with heather with a long seat around the interior - William described it as like a "wren’s nest" and even wrote a little poem about it:

No whimsy of the purse is here,
No Pleasure-House forlorn;
Use, Comfort do this roof endear;
A tributary Shed to cheer
The little Cottage that is near,
To help it and adorn.

Bad news, the hut was demolished by a later owner, the writer Thomas de Quincey and there are no images of it surviving. Good news, in 2020 a replacement hut was built by designer Charlie Whinney (featured previously on Shedworking) in collaboration with natural world campaigners somewhere-nowhere out of Cumbrian oak at Dove Cottage along the same nest-like lines as the original (see images above). It looks tremendous and it's hoped that it will inspire new generations of writers. All the pandemic stuff has rather got in the way of a proposed tour of the moss hut in the region, but it's in situ at Dove Cottage and there are hopes that once things improve it can hit the road in 2021.

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Wednesday’s posts are sponsored by Norwegian Log Buildings  - Log cabins and garden buildings for a better quality of life. Click here for more details.

Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Nooka garden office launches



Launching a new approach to working away from traditional offices during a time of a garden office revolution seems like a smart idea, not surprising when that idea comes from co-founder and CEO Leanne Beesley, the force behind the innovative Coworker.com.
 
So here is the newly-launched Nooka which claims to be the world’s first network of wifi-connected, fully equipped, ergonomic garden offices. Each one comes with full workstation setup including a Steelcase electric height-adjustable desk and ergonomic chair, whiteboard, and smart heating/cooling system. There are various sizes 6m/5m/4m/3m x 3m x 3m, all with window walls, glass door (bi-fold for larger models), and attractive roof overhang, but its modular system makes things quite flexible. It comes in three colours, yellow, orange and pale blue.
 
There are certainly some interesting aspects of Nooka. For a start, instead of paying for your garden office all in one lump sum, they offer a lower installation fee followed by a monthly subscription. Also, you can join the Nooka network and rent yours out to people locally (by day or hour) using its app, think Airbnb for garden offices. Alternatively, you can rent other Nookas yourself.
 
Nooka is a European company and currently all orders have been within Europe as they are not shipping to the US yet. It is producing its first orders at its manufacturing facility in Romania, with deliveries starting in March this year. The aim is to have approximately 50 "out in the wild" by April available to rent, including some in the UK (COVID-related restrictions permitting).

 

 

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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, January 18, 2021

Inside Cressida Cowell's shed

Writer Cressida Cowell is excellent at keeping us updated with photos of her path to her garden office throughout the year and also regularly records videos inside her writing shed, but here's a treat, a close-up of her writing desk. Note the lucky horseshoe.

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Friday, January 15, 2021

Ricky Boleto builds his Newsround garden office shed


BBC Newsround presenter Ricky Boleto has been charting the makeover of his garden shed into a television studio on Twitter (see above for the before and after shots). Here's what the BBC says about it: "It's kitted out with power, internet, neon lights that change colour, a massive TV screen and lots of other gadgets to help him report on the latest stories from home." 

He's now put together a great little video about his new garden office which you can see on the BBC's Newsround site here

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Thursday, January 14, 2021

The importance of the garden office commute

 

We've often talked about the 30 second garden office commute here on Shedworking so we were interested to read in the Wall Street Journal (£) that people are developing fake commutes because they miss the routine. Here's a snippet:

It can be a walk around the block. It can be a stop at your local coffee pickup counter or your favorite drive-thru. Many workers have replaced their pre-coronavirus commutes with allotted time around work shifts where they break away from what can be the monotony of working from home, also known as the pretend or "fake commute." One woman told the Wall Street Journal she missed having a "clear dividing line in her weekday." Researchers recommend this practice as a means to fend off burnout.

Shedworking believes this is one of the important things to consider when shedworking, that although you don't have to fight your way through traffic jams or a crowded underground, it's still good to start the working day with a ceremonial commute. While it’s not usually the highlight of the day, it does at least effectively mark the border between home and work. So instead of cracking straight into it after breakfast, nip outside and have a brief wander. Not too long, this is merely taking the air and getting yourself in work mode, not exercise. It’s your 30 second commute.

The Guardian has an interesting gallery of articles about how the pandemic has affected commuting in the UK.

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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.

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Garden office tax planning: business ownership

In the third and final part of this excellent series by Helen Thornley, Technical Officer at The Association of Taxation Technicians on accountingWEB (see here for the previous two) she looks a a wide range of issues including structures and buildings allowance, VAT, and what happens when you come to sell your house. Here's a snippet, talking about 'benefit in kind':

One approach would be to view the pod as an asset which has been lent to the director and is available for their use, but to which legal title has not been transferred. If the pod does not fall within the special rules for living accommodation, then the general rules will apply. The HMRC view is that living accommodation is something that gives the occupant the necessary facilities to live domestic life independently without reliance on others to supply basic needs, so offices and workshops are excluded.

In this case, unless the pod is hired, the cash equivalent of the pod to be assessed each year as a benefit will be 20% of the market value of the asset when first made available – most likely the cost of the asset when new. This is likely to be more significant than the benefit in kind for living accommodation and, if the pod is to be kept long term, it might be better for the director who wants personal use to pay to install it privately. In the first tax year, this benefit can be apportioned so the individual is only taxed on the number of days since the pod was first made available.

As with previous blog posts, this is well worth reading.

Photo courtesy Warwick Buildings

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Wednesday’s posts are sponsored by Norwegian Log Buildings  - Log cabins and garden buildings for a better quality of life. Click here for more details.

 

Tuesday, January 12, 2021

Straw bale garden office

A tremendous garden office meeting room built for and by Outpost architecture and design studio based in London. Here's what they say about it:

"Our straw room is a self-build project that highlights the ease of building with natural building materials making it an affordable and accessible solution for the UK’s housing needs. The walls are solely load bearing straw bales, with then lime render to both the inside and outside surfaces. This construction technique creates a building envelope that has high thermal mass, high U-value of 0.1 and fantastic acoustic qualities. All the materials we used (straw, sheeps wool, lime render and timber) are low embodied energy materials that create an architecture with health and well-being benefits over traditional construction methods."

More details and images at the link above. 

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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, January 11, 2021

Waiting times rise for garden offices in Ireland

An interesting article in the Belfast Telegraph reveals that prospective shedworkers in Ireland are in some cases having to wait up to 10 months for their new garden office as waiting lists grow.

Although there are plans to increase the numbers of co-working spaces, the garden office route remains a very popular one. The article gives a brief survey of garden office specialists and their waiting times including Shomera (pictured above) whose waiting list is now up to the end of October, Timber Living Log Cabins (May), and  Ecohome Log Cabins Ireland (August).  More details at the link above.

Those still looking for suppliers have ample resources to do so here on the Shedworking site but over the weekend Kat Burroughs at The Sunday Times put together a nice piece 'How to create a garden office' which also has a useful list and thoughts (£).

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Monday posts are sponsored by eDEN Garden Rooms. Stunning, bespoke high quality garden rooms, to suit your unique space and style

Saturday, January 09, 2021

Snowy sheds 2021

Here's our first snowy garden office post of 2021, belonging to friend of Shedworking teacher Tracy Goodyear. If you've got a photo of your snowy shed, let us know!

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Friday, January 08, 2021

Lockdown garden office bothy build

Peter Montgomery transformed his Cambridgeshire garage into a garden office bothy during lockdown last year and below is the video showing the transformation plus a tour of the shedworking space. You can read more about how Peter did it, including his use of recycled materials, on readersheds.

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