Bespoke garden office with furniture

This garden office by eDEN Garden Rooms was for a shedworker in a terraced house in Balham, London. It was an interesting build as it had to be specially designed to fit the built-in office furniture that the client had already planned for the room. Additionally there was no side access so everthing was built on site and materials brought through the house.

It measures 2.5m x 6m - built to the boundary so includes fire retardant panelling to thee sides - and as well as a home office also includes a shed store. Features include French doors and an extra floor-to-ceiling window for added views of garden. eDEN usually use screw piles as foundations for new garden rooms but here there were concrete slabs already in situ so in the end the entire thing was built on a concrete base.

A short history of garageworking

Garageworking is the twin sibling of Shedworking - as readers know, many great ideas came from garageworkers such as Walt Disney and companies such as technology giant HP first set up shop in a garage. A nice little article on the always excellent Atlas Obscura Why There’s No Place Quite Like the American Garage, looks at the garage phenomenon and points out for example that garages are "a perfect stage for rebellion", going on to list:

"...the one where Jeff Ho shaped surfboards and skateboards and, by extension, modern skate culture; the one where No Doubt practiced and had their first house show; the one where the Sisters of the Valley, an order of secular nuns, grew weed; the garage of dominatrix Selina Minx; and the home of Franklin Bell’s Blues Workshop, held on Sundays in a one-car garage in Los Angeles."

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

Exterior shed paint

Although Cuprinol is often the name associated with sheds, at least partly because of their sponsorship of Shed of the Year, it's worth remembering that there are other options out there. Shedworking has just been sent a heap of photos from exterior paint experts Sadolin and Sandtex (sister brands of Crown Paints) of their product in action, including the above. These were launched at the company's press preview last week which they say "showcase the range of vibrant masonry shades and beautifully natural wood stains". Here's the rest of their bumph:

"Sandtex offers a range of rapid dry products that can be used on a wide variety of surfaces, allowing you to insert colour into your home exteriors through metal and wooden furniture, including front doors and accessories. For durable wood stains, the Sadolin products enhance the natural beauty of wood in decking, fencing and exterior furniture, providing a superior finish whilst ensuring they’re protected from the elements."

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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.

The effect of a garden office on the value of your property

 An evergreen issue this, and an interesting anecdote from Mark Burton who runs Tiny House (Cabins). On the back of Country Living's article earlier in the year which suggested a garden office/room can add £35,000 to your property's value, Mark used the Zoopla tool to compare prices of homes in Surrey with and without garden rooms. And here's what he found:

"A few years ago I built a 3m x 4m cabin at the end of a garden in Surrey.  It had a lofted sleeping area for a double mattress, a small shower room, WC and under floor heating which cost the owners £18,000. The property was recently sold for £521,000. A few doors away is an identical property that I found on Zoopla in roughly the same condition but without extra living space at the end of the garden being offered for sale at £479,950 (that's £41,000 less)."

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Commuting lengths rising

Shedworkers will be interested that the number of people commuting for more than an hour has risen by 31% since 2011, according to latest figures from the Office of National Statistics. Although men are more likely to make commutes lasting more than an hour, the number of women with long commutes is up by 39%, compared with a 27% rise for men.

In particular, the number of women travelling for more than an hour to work in London has increased by 46% since 2011, accounting for more than half of the overall growth in long commutes for women.

The findings show that men undertake almost two-thirds of commutes lasting more than an hour, while women account for more than half (55%) of commutes lasting 15 minutes or less.


 
Men are more likely than women to commute by train while women are more likely to walk or travel by bus. The car is the most equal and the most popular form of transport; it accounts for two-thirds of all commutes by both men and women respectively. In contrast, cycling is among the most unequal ways of commuting, with men accounting for 74% of those who cycle to work.

Overall, men are more likely than women to make commutes of over an hour in almost every country or region of the UK. Among those who travel for more than an hour to work in London (where long commutes are commonplace), 61% are men. The greatest disparity is in the East of England, where 76% of long commutes are undertaken by men. The North East is the only region where women make more long commutes than men As well as accounting for most commutes lasting more than an hour, men make the majority of commutes between regions.

Around 9% of all commuters live in a different region to their place of work, and 65% of them are men. This trend is seen across the UK, particularly in Scotland where 77% of those commuting from elsewhere are men.

Women are more likely than men to commute for 15 minutes or less in every part of the UK except for London. The largest gap is among those working in the South East of England, where women account for 58% of short commutes.

Image courtesy eDEN Garden Rooms -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 a garden office (video)

There must be something shedlike in the air as there are various folk putting up garden office 'how to' videos at the moment. Here's the latest by Richard Fearon who runs the excellent Fix Make Create site. Below is the first in a planned series in which he looks at building a wooden garden office in his back garden on a deck, the whole thing coming in at 3m x 6m. More videos to come...

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

Boat Pod garden office for sale

We've covered Barney Dearsly's marvellous Boat Pod before on Shedworking so we were delighted to hear via that other shed blog that you can now actually buy it. If you'd like to invest, contact Barney at his site here (it's a really great price). Just to recep here's what he says about it:

The Boat-Pod is a unique space built from the bow section of the Anthony Stevenson, a retired wooden fishing trawler that worked out of Newly Harbour, Cornwall. Shaped by the original massive, curved planks of larch and ribs of oak, this truly magical space can be adapted to a plethora of uses: a retreat, a children’s den, an artist's studio, a writer’s room, a personal library, somewhere to sleep out. Completed with electrics, engineered oak floor and wood burning stove it offers the comforts of 21st century living within a cosy, atmospheric and beautifully crafted structure that was built to withstand the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

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