Shedworking features in The Ladybird Book of The Shed

The whole of the Shedworking staff are delighted. More details about the book here. --------------------------------------------------------------------
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Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.

Ecocapsule

The egg-ish Ecocapsule from Nice Architects is technically a 'portable house' with off-grid capability but would be great for shedworking. As well as a desk, features include a kitchenette, lavatory, and shower. The whole thing is powered by a built-in wind turbine and solar cells which cover its exterior. Should be available at the start of 2016.

 Thanks to Colin Shelbourn for the spot ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Christmas crafters worth £376 million to the UK economy

New research from small business insurer Direct Line for Business suggests over three million people in the UK plan to use their home offices (and homes in general) to make goods to sell this festive season.

These ‘Christmas crafters’ are set to generate sales of over £376 million, selling items such as homemade gift cards, candles, and wine glass charms. With consumers increasingly looking for unique, original, handmade goods, there is huge demand for home produced craft items as an alternative to mass produced high-street merchandise.

‘Christmas crafters’ devote long hours to their home enterprises working on average 19 hours a week from October to December, despite many of these shedworkers and entrepreneurs also holding down full time jobs. Seven per cent of those selling festive items will work over 40 hours a week in the run up to Christmas making their wares.

Despite the festive season offering a relatively small sales window for seasonal merchandise, 17 per cent of Christmas crafters make items all year round. The most popular channel for Christmas crafters to sell their wares is through Christmas markets (59 per cent) and also online auction websites (53 per cent) such as eBay. Other entrepreneurs are using online marketplaces such as Etsy and Not On The High Street (21 per cent) or their own website (14 per cent). ----------------------------------------------------

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

Map of tiny houses around the world

There's a great map of tiny houses around the world which will be of interest to shedworkers too as each entry has links to more details about each build. Obviously it's not exhaustive, but it is interesting to browse and confirms that while the US is well ahead globally in terms of numbers,  tinyhousers are increasing in numbers in western Europe too.

Found on the excellent MiniMotives site which has a vast array of personal experiences, tips, pictures, and general sound advice about living small. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

How to build your own workshop

Nick Abson converted his selfbuild garden room into a workshop and has blogged excellently about the experience over the last three years from the intital build right up to the present at The Small Workshop. It's extremely thorough and a definite must-read for anybody thinking of doing something similar. Here's what Nick says:

I did the building work myself, with some help on the heavy lifting, and it took a while (about a year), with the slow progress mainly down to my complete lack of relevant experience. The designs were done in Sketchup, and the building is constructed with the materials typically used in commercially available garden rooms: structurally insulated panels, cedar cladding, ‘mini plinths’ footings and epdm rubber on the roof. Now the building is done I am focused on the inside and turning it into a small but useful space.

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

Cabin Porn: book review

Cabin Porn Book Trailer from Cabin Porn on Vimeo.

We previewed the Cabin Porn book last month and since then we've been enjoying the actual thing. There are very few actual garden offices, but plenty of inspiration with chapters focusing on yurts, living underground, treehouses, and wilderness homesteads. It's not really a 'how to' book with in-depth advice on the nuts and bolts of building a shedlike structure, but there are plenty of detailed case studies which concentrate as much on the mindset and the reasons for going small as they do on what kind of broadaxe to buy. Fabulous illustrations, nicely designed, but could have done with an index and a Further Reading/links section. ----------------------------------------------------

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

Airstream garden office

The Shedworking staff are big fans of Airstream garden offices so we were particularly glad to hear from regular reader Colin Shelbourn about this beauty which sold recently in Newport Beach as part of a house sale. --------------------------------------------------------------------
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Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.