The Secrets of Scott's Hut

If you missed this marvellous BBC documentary about Scott's Hut, nip along smartish to the BBC's iPlayer thingie and watch/download it. Here's the bumph:

"Ben Fogle joins an expedition across Antarctica to find Captain Scott's Hut, frozen in time for a century. The hut was built to support Scott's 1911 attempt to be first to the South Pole, and was later abandoned together with ten thousand personal, everyday and scientific items. Ben uncovers the hut and its contents, finding new information about his hero Scott and his famously tragic expedition. Scott's diaries are read by Kenneth Branagh."

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Fridays posts are sponsored by Swift Foundations. We design bespoke, eco friendly, foundation solutions. Our Plinths are LABC system approved and manufactured to British Standard BS8110 by a ISO 9000 company. www.swiftfoundations.co.uk for details.

Are garden office price rises inevitable?

Analysts seem to be in agreement that timber prices are set to rise in the very near future with obvious knockon effects for anybody considering buying a garden office." Sterling’s weakness against the euro has pushed up the cost of imports from Baltic sawmills and most north European producers. Faced with increasing sawlog and transport costs, shippers expect prices to increase on a monthly basis for the foreseeable future," says Jerry Wilson in the Timber Trades Journal.

"The rebuilding of Japan is likely to create an increase in demand for timber," says David Whitewood of Oazis Garden Studios. "Combine this with oil prices affecting transport costs, exchange rates, etc, and the price of sheds and garden offices - garden offices also have a large glass component that requires a lot of energy to manufacture - will be going up by 10% or more this summer.

"The moral of the story - even if you are planning a build late summer - is order now to secure pricing. We are working with our supply chain to keep prices down so are not announcing any price increases yet but we will guarantee any prices for delivery up until the end of September if ordered."
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Fridays posts are sponsored by Swift Foundations. We design bespoke, eco friendly, foundation solutions. Our Plinths are LABC system approved and manufactured to British Standard BS8110 by a ISO 9000 company. www.swiftfoundations.co.uk for details.

Huts & Hideaways (updated)

Huts & Hideaways is a new Helmsley-based business from Sally Coulthard, author of Shed Chic, building miniature shepherds huts for children. "As a mother of two small children, I know how much little people love spaces designed exclusively for them," she says, "a world where everything is child-sized, comforting and cosy. These portable cabins provide the perfect all-weather space for teddies tea parties, pirate games or summer sleepovers. They’re also a terrific focal point for your garden and a real talking point."

The design does not aim to recreate 19th century shepherds huts but instead capture the essence and charm of the shepherd's hut - however they are built using many of the traditional techniques used for vintage caravans including traditional canvas-bonded roofs (as you’d find on Victorian railway carriages) and tongue and groove timber cladding, as well as iron wheels hand-made by a local blacksmith. Each hut is painted both inside and out using Farrow & Ball Primer & Undercoat and Farrow & Ball Full Gloss. The huts are made using sustainable materials (e.g. Thermowood® timber for cladding, FSC softwood, etc).
As well as the website, if you're interested please call Sally on 01439 748513, email her at sallycoulthard@hotmail.co.uk or write to her at Huts & Hideaways, Stonegrave Lodge Farm, Stonegrave, North Yorkshire YO62 4LL.
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Hempcrete: the most ecofriendly garden office ever?

Shoe designer Alexei Gaylard makes shoes that tread eco-lightly on the earth using green materials and made by people who were paid a decent wage. So it's not suprising, as the Daily Telegraph reveals, that when it came to a garden office he went for something equally environmentally-friendly: he built a hempcrete shedworking atmosphere.

Pictured above, Alexei's garden office is built of hemp, lime and turf and a green roof from which last year he harvested a kilo of rocket which had accidentally taken hold there. Here's a snippet of the article:

It is not perfect – small hairline cracks have appeared in the paintwork and there is some beading missing around the door – [but] he loves its imperfections: “You get a special kind of relationship with something you’ve been so involved with – we made the windows the shape we wanted and the walls are kind of bouncy, which I like.”

The whole build used recycled or renewable materials and was erected by himself and hempcrete expert Will Stanwix who will be at Grand Designs Live this year talking about the marvel of low-impact buildings, especially their thermal properties. The Telegraph also has a nice little gallery of pictures on this subject and the rest of the article features other shedworkers. Well worth a browse.
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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.

At the back of the garden office

We usually only feature the fronts and sides of garden offices, and sometimes the roofs. We very rarely focus on the backs of them. So it's about time we put that right. Here's the back of author Joanne Harris's garden office - for more details about her shedworking life, see this exclusive interview and for her new book click 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.

Shed of the Year: media go wild

The media are starting early with their coverage of Shed of the Year 2011 with the Metro kicking things off by showcasing some contenders. If you haven't entered your garden office or shedlike atmosphere yet, you must do so before May 16. Go to readersheds.co.uk to sign up for a chance to claim top prize and stacks of Cuprinol wood products.

There are also articles about it in the Daily Mail, The Sun, and Daily Telegraph.
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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.

Shedworkers wanted for primetime TV comedy show

You and your partner could be the stars of a new Saturday night comedy panel show. The folk at Endemol Television are looking for couples who are very much in love, but have an ongoing lighthearted dispute or silly argument that they would like a comedy panel to solve for them, once and for all - a pilot of this show earlier in the year included Jack Dee, Jo Brand and Sarah Millican. I spoke to the nice lady at Endemol and she is particularly keen to find somebody who who spends all their time in the shed, or devotes all their spare time to doing it up, much to their partner's despair. Couples who are chosen for the show will be paid for their time too so if you are in a relationship and would like to apply, email couples@endemoluk.com for an application or call their hotline on 0333 577 7772.
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