Monday, December 20, 2021

Merry Christmas to all our readers


“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 January 3.

Sunday, December 19, 2021

A year of #shedworking

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunday posts are sponsored by Henshalls Insurance, specialists in insuring garden offices and other garden buildings. Click here for more information.

 

Saturday, December 18, 2021

Raum: German shedworking



No proof required of course that garden offices are limited in their geographic scope. Here's another example from Germany, Raum (Room) from Tarantik & Egger who describe it as "a ready-made micro architecture made from the highest-quality wood. Harmonically blending into nature.". Features include a full-frame glass window with curtain for privacy, wooden clapboard walls (built in Austria), and a platform roof that be converted into a green roof. Size start at 3. x 3m, rising to 7m x 3m.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to your new teak garden room from Moonalabs. Unparalleled quality at an affordable price.

Friday, December 17, 2021

Garage to workspace renovation

A fabulous garage refurb by design and architecture firm McCloy + Muchemwa who also dealt with an existing asbestos issue for this build in Norwich, renamed The Orangery. Lots of images of the transformation on the site via the link above and how they turned it into a greenhouse with workspace. Features include upcycled workbenches and a covered outside space. Here's what they say about it:

The black cladding finish was selected to provide a backdrop that emphasises the colours in garden and flower beds, an approach that references classical still-life paintings. The bright orange colour celebrates the dramatic and uninterrupted seven-metre span of the pergola's steel beam and is in 'complementary contrast' to the azure colour of the sky. A triangular motif reoccurs throughout the project, from the pitched roof, greenhouse structural bracing and ventilation panel, to the 'pyramid window' and even down to small details such as the shelf brackets and three-rod legs on the workbenches.

Photos by Simon Kennedy

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Thursday, December 16, 2021

LEGO beach hut


Still looking for a shedlike Christmas present? How about LEGO's beach hut kit (pictured above), three different possibilities in one set which includes what they describe as "a cool summer shack". Features include a cash register (?), floor lamp, radio, bottled beverages, two minifigure, and the possibility of hiring surfboards from a beachfront surf shop, all in a yellow, dark blue and white colour scheme. We've just checked and there is availability out there still though it seems to be selling fast.

Or how about this one, below, which you can vote for on the LEGO site as one for the future - it's built on a 24 x 48 stud surface and includes nine minifigs. We really like this.

  • -------------------------------------------------------

    Thursday posts are sponsored by Cabin Master: garden offices and studios to fit any size garden. Top quality contemporary or traditional buildings.

Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Adding light to garden offices

Over the years, garden office suppliers have increased the size of windows and added windows into doors to increase the amount of light into the shedlike space within. Leading interior designer Abigail Ahern has another solution, installing a Velux roof window (she explains and shows us around her work cabin in the video below). In an interesting interview with plenty of photos in Vogue, she describes how the increased daylight helps her general mood and improve the atmosphere. Here's a snippet:

“Where I work changes with the light. As the sun moves around the house, this little garden office is now the most amazing space to be in. This window has completely transformed a super gloomy, tiny space into something that’s bathed in soft daylight from above, which is beautiful.”

More details about her cabin life on her blog here, and also in an interview with the Guardian.

Image courtesy Velux

----------------------------------

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, December 14, 2021

How to build a shed most Googled DIY question of 2021


According to a new survey by metal supplier metals4U, the most Googled DIY question of the year, using search data from January to December 2021, reveals that the list is topped by 'How to build a shed' with 164,400 searches, not very closely followed by 'How to paint a room' (58,500), and 'How to fix a dripping tap' (52,800) in 2nd and 3rd spots.

Managing Director of metals4U, Paul McFadyen said: “There was significant investment going into home improvements throughout 2021. Depending on your shed size, height and usage requirements there are different planning permissions around building a shed, so it’s worth checking this first. Some people prefer to build metal sheds as they are sturdier and more weather resistant. We would recommend using either galvanized aluminium or mild steel that is treated with a proprietary weatherproofing product if doing so."

Of course, there are books available on exactly this subject... (and currently on a pleasant festive discount if you buy directly from the publishers Haynes). 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

  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 13, 2021

Garden offices predicted to remain important to property values in 2022

Property specialists Jackson-Stops have been peering into their crystal ball to make predictions about the market for next year including a 3%+ price rise, shorter chains, and more interest in ecofriendly features, but emphaising in particular that the work from home trend is here to stay.

A whopping 91% of the company's branches believe that that home offices and fast broadband connectivity will continue to be at the top of house hunters’ wish lists next year, with many noting that buyers want these working facilities to be located outside the main house in outbuildings or a garden office. 

Nick Leeming, chairman of Jackson-Stops, suggested that homeworkers who remain unaffected by the reopening of their offices will now have the confidence to make a permanent move to a more rural location. “Buying a home is a long-term commitment and with lockdowns still fresh in people’s minds, house hunters are looking for properties that are more flexible, spacious and rural than where they lived pre-pandemic," he said.  

--------------------------------------

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

 

Sunday, December 12, 2021

Garden shed Christmas bauble

Another garden office Christmas gift idea today, one that would look ideal both inside your shedworking space and in the main home. It comes from Quality Garden Supplies who say that the new bauble follows the success of last year's greenhouse design. Features include rooftop metallic coloured light string, detailing on all sides, and snow with a glitter shimmer. Nice!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunday posts are sponsored by Henshalls Insurance, specialists in insuring garden offices and other garden buildings. Click here for more information.

Saturday, December 11, 2021

The Scottish Shedder Magazine new issue out now

A new issue of the always excellent The Scottish Shedder produced by the Scottish Men's Sheds Association is now available online. As always it features interviews, case studies (including a focus on Dunfermline, Livingston, Westhill and District, and Inverurie and District Men's Sheds) personal stories, and much more. You can read it online at the association's site here or you can download it as a pdf here.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to your new teak garden room from Moonalabs. Unparalleled quality at an affordable price.

Friday, December 10, 2021

Hot tub garden office feature

If you're looking to add a new feature to your garden office experience, you could buy a new picture for the wall, or perhaps a colourful rug. Or you could go down a different route and get a hot tub. Pictured above is an example from Hydropool Midlands, sister company to garden office/building specialist Cabinmaster. Here's what one of their customers, Max, says about his hot tub:

“Working from home can be stressful, Zoom & Teams meetings are testing my patience, when it all gets a bit much I take a dip in the hot tub. Certainly when I’d normally be taking a breather with a brew at the office I’m now having a soak. I come back really productive! I’m going to miss this when and if I have to go back to work!”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

 

Thursday, December 09, 2021

Mini fridge for the garden office

As we bustle towards December 25, we continue our occasional look at possible Christmas present ideas for the shedworker in your life, which may of course very well be you. This time we're looking at widely available mini fridges. One thing to bear in mind of course is simply the size of the beast, taking into account what space you can afford in your garden office. But it's also worth knowing that there is a wide selection of titchy domestic fridges which are ostensibly for keeping beauty products cool but are equally useful in doing the same job for food.

So above as an example is the Russell Hobbs Retro Portable Beauty Cooler and Warmer. It holds a tidy 14L of stuff within its white glossy exterior, and as well as a cooler you can flick a switch and turn it into a warmer too, up to 65°C above the ambient temperature. Below is something similar, the StylPro Beauty Fridge with rose gold detail.

Here's something a bit more conventionally fridgey, the AstroAI Mini Fridge which comes with a carry handle and a removable shelf. Again, this one holds 4L.

And finally, the Cooluli Skincare Mini Fridge, also 4L and built to be really quiet.

 

For more ideas, take a look at mini fridge roundups by the Daily Telegraph and BBC Good Food.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thursday posts are sponsored by Cabin Master: garden offices and studios to fit any size garden. Top quality contemporary or traditional buildings.

Wednesday, December 08, 2021

Helen Peters' ideal writer's shed

 

There's an excellent interview with awardwinning writer Helen Peters, author of the Jasmine Green series and most recently A Puppy Called Sparkle, at the Reading Zone. She talks in particular about the key role that sheds played in her early life and has a marvellous answer when asked to describe her ideal writer's shed.

A: This is something I think about a lot! Whenever I visit a stately home with a beautiful summerhouse in the garden, I redecorate it in my imagination as my writing shed.

So my ideal writing shed wouldn't really be a shed at all, but a grand summerhouse with brick walls, tiled floors and a high ceiling. All along the front wall would be floor-to-ceiling French windows, and the other walls would be lined with books. I would have a big table facing the windows, and a fireplace in one wall, so I could keep cosy with a log fire in the winter.

The summerhouse would be in a garden full of flowers and fruit trees and singing birds, and all around the garden would be woods and hills. The garden would be walled on three sides, but at the front it would open out on to a lake. When I needed a break from writing, I would swim in the lake or walk in the woods and hills.

You can read the whole interview, it's quite short, via the link above. 

----------------------------------

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, December 07, 2021

Garden office price rises

A couple of months ago we looked at why the prices of garden offices are more than just creeping up a little bit. Booths Garden Studios are the latest to suggest that if you're thinking seriously of buying a garden office, then you will save money by doing so sooner rather than later.

Booths are among those raising their garden studio prices, despite trying to absorb increases arising from problematic material supply as well as the simple doubling of the price of timber in the last 12 months, a 57% rise in the cost of steel (integral to the Booths build), and a 32% jump in window prices. Staff wages haven't yet gone up in a bid to keep prices down, although rising inflation will almost certainly mean that cannot last.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

  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 06, 2021

Garden office installation: the shedworker's view


Today we have a guest post from James Taylor who wrote in to Shedworking with his experiences of looking for, buying, and having a garden office installed.

After far too long I have finally joined the world of shedworking! It's been in an extended planning phase after being diagnosed with a chronic disease in 2019. You might think a pandemic would have focused the mind but a combination of lockdowns and shortages meant a much longer stay on a makeshift shelf-desk than expected. Admittedly there was lots of indecisiveness as well and I definitely recognise some of the same deliberations as Paul.

There were also a few false starts along the way, including one notable runner up, Aspen Garden Rooms, the only quote which included electrical connection and foundations, which would have saved so much hassle.

After much deliberation we finally decided on the Workaway Plectrum and because we needed to organise foundations ourselves, a long overdue new patio at the same time. Although being small enough to fit in the corner of the garden was a big consideration, I was still slightly unsure about the size of the workspace inside, so it was great to be able to visit Bolton Buildings and have a look at the prototype.

The space actually works really well. The desk is a huge improvement over what I had been squashed on indoors, and there's plenty of room to be comfortable while not having too much room for the office to be taken over for other purposes!

After a long wait for delivery, which is understandable in the circumstances, installation took a surprisingly long time. I had assumed that it would be mostly assembled from pre-finished panels but there was actually a fair bit of carpentry on site. For example creating the curves for the cladding to go over.

Talking of the cladding, the corrugated board is bitumen based, which unfortunately left marks on the new patio. Obviously accidents happen but apart from a cursory apology, they were fairly dismissive which was a little disappointing given the upset it caused. (A patio has been on the to do list a lot longer the an office!). Fortunately GBI Construction who laid the patio and foundations (would definitely recommend), were able to get most of the bitumen off.

I finally moved in to the new office in October, when the sun was still warm enough to show up an unexpected issue. There is a black board which runs around the base of the office which expands and warps when it gets warm. Obviously that's not something building the prototype inside a warehouse would have shown up, but they are going to add a few more fixings to see if that will help keep it in place. It's been snowing today though so it might be a while before I find out whether that solves the problem!

As for temperature, it has been keeping nicely warm on the few cold days so far. I suspect keeping cool might be more of an issue in the hot weather. Time will tell but I'm expecting to have the door open a lot next year...

It definitely feels like it's still early days for the home office side of the business but I hope they persevere because I think it's a genuinely clever design and overall I'm really pleased with the new office.


--------------------------------------

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

Saturday, December 04, 2021

Erin Bow: shedworker

A festively atmospheric photo of the shed office belonging to novelist and poet Erin Bow (The Scorpion Rules, The Swan Riders) in Kitchener, Ontaria, Canada, in which she has been writing since 2015. Although the building came with the house when she bought it, Erin had it improved by former local bookstore owner and carpenter Chuck Erion, then raised it to install a decent foundation, plasterboarded the walls, then put in insulation and electrics, though no wifi.

And here's the same garden office, this time in magnoliatastic spring.

You can read more about Erin and other nearby people who have creative workspaces in a nice piece in the local Waterloo Record newspaper as well as an interview with Erin in the same newspaper here about working in there. Here's a snippet:

A rainbow arch of assorted prayer flags and multicoloured meditations hang above the entrance. Inside, there's a simple desk, a green-upholstered second-hand chair with floral-pattern cushions and a standup lamp Bow picked up at Canadian Tire. "It's kind of cosy," Bow said. Sure beats the cramped office space Bow used to rent at the far end of a pole-dancing-for-fitness studio, above a King Street coffee shop.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to your new teak garden room from Moonalabs. Unparalleled quality at an affordable price.

 

 

Friday, December 03, 2021

Earthbag solar shed office

 

Here is a remarkable build by Jonathan and Ashley Longnecker and their family which they have documented at their excellent site Tiny Shiny Home. It's a garden office (though frankly the term 'garden' is maybe not quite so applicable here) with additional guest accommodation in south east Arizona. Built using a kind of cob technique with hyperadobe earthbags, it's completely off-grid thanks to its use of solar. There's a full rundown with imagery at the site here but here's a peek at the office set-up...

And here's the view from the office...


They've also documented the whole thing in a video. It's not short, but it's well worth a watch.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Thursday, December 02, 2021

Gilbert Spencer: shedworker

Painter Gilbert Spencer (1892 - 1979), younger brother of the more famous Sir Stanley, lived for many years at Tree Cottage in Upper Basildon, Berkshire. He mostly worked out in the open but in winter also painted, somewhat relectantly, in a garden room, which he called his 'little Colt studio'. It's privately owned now and there are very few pictures of it available, the best we can find is included above. Here's what he says about it in his memoirs:

‘When I entered it for the first time I hated it so much that I knocked it about, and messed it up to get it more in sympathy with my feelings for painting in odd corners, or bedrooms, indoors. The fact is I am no “studio” artist and never have been.’

Purpose-built for Gilbert in the mid-1930s, the property is Grade II listed and here's what Historic England has to say about the studio's listing:

This is a rectangular weatherboarded structure, oriented West to east with a pitched roof covered in diamond shaped felt tiles. Large windows to the south and west, the latter floor to ceiling in height, are designed to allow the maximum amount of light into the studio. Both are timber-framed with multiple lights. The studio is entered through a simple plank door in the south elevation and the interior is a single space with panelling to dado height and a wooden floor. 
Here is a self-portrait from 1967 painted in the Colt studio which Spencer called Activity at Tree Cottage No.2.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thursday posts are sponsored by Cabin Master: garden offices and studios to fit any size garden. Top quality contemporary or traditional buildings.

Wednesday, December 01, 2021

The right size for a shepherd's hut

As you might expect from the country's leading shepherd's hut producer, Richard Lee of Plankbridge has some very firm views about what is and what is not acceptable when describing something as a shepherd's hut. He's just posted some of his thoughts on his blog here about dimensions and the Roadman's Living Van. Here's a snippet on hut height:

Where the width and length was entirely practical the height was too – there would be no point in making a portable structure that dragged on trees as it passed down the lanes and through gateways into the fields. So most huts would be no more than 10’ / 305cm high from ground to the top of the roof curve.

The only exception to this might be the pitched roofed huts which are found around Norfolk and Suffolk, these would be higher to the ridge, at 11’ or 12’ but perhaps low branches weren’t such a thing on the flat fenlands. The windows were often simply narrow slides on a shepherd’s hut. These days our standard window opening is 63cm by 90cm, and we do doubles too. Daylight and making the best of the views is essential in a modern day hut. We also even do glazed ends in anthracite grey aluminium.

It's well worth a read, especially for the anecdote at the start... 

----------------------------------

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.