Greenvalley Nursery Sheds

As you know, Shedworking likes a good book and a good book in a shed is obviously twice as good. So we were delighted to hear about Exeter-based shed-sellers Greenvalley Nursery Sheds who fill their sheds with secondhand books and then pass on the profits from the 'pay as you want' book sales to the Kenya-based charity Urafiki. They also run other crafts events so it's well worth a visit if you're in the area.  -------------------------------------------------
Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.

Haynes Shed Manual: early Christmas shopping

I know it's a bit early to be pushing books for Christmas, but if there's a loved one or family member you know who would like a copy of my shed manual co-authored with John Coupe, you can  buy it direct from the publishers Haynes or your local bookshop, or even more direct from me if you'd like a copy signed by me and John. Email me if you'd like a copy. Sample spreads below:

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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

Five expert tips on buying a garden office

If you’re looking for an easy, lower cost alternative to building a bricks and mortar extension to accommodate a new home office, a log-based garden room is a great solution. It's quick to install, normally no planning permission is needed, and it could add value to your home - a survey last year by the HomeOwners Alliance and the Federation of Master Builders revealed installing a garden room could add more than £35,000 in 14 days to an averagely priced home in Surrey. Moreover, with bifold doors, cosy heated interiors and on-trend looks, these kinds of structures can be a great asset to any garden.

Nick Forrester founded Norwegian Log Buildings more than 20 years ago and has come up with his top five tips for Shedworking's readers on how to buy a garden office that really fits your needs:

Tip 1. Establish whether you’ll need planning permission

In most cases, if it’s sized under 30m2 and under 2.5m high, garden buildings do not require planning permission or building regulations - provided they are 1m from a boundary - as they are considered as a ‘Permitted Development’. But, if you want a larger garden building or live in a National Park/AONB, then the chances are you could need planning permission, and if you live in a Listed Building, then you definitely will. More information on that, here.

Tip 2. Think about access

Think about how your new office building will be delivered to your garden space. Is there adequate access? For example, if you live in a terraced house, can you access the garden from the rear? If not, make sure you choose a supplier that can either use a crane or supply the building in parts which can be walked through your home or side gate.

Tip 3. Research product quality

In line with home garden offices becoming more popular, the number of suppliers offering this kind of building on the market has also increased, so make sure you check out customer reviews online and make sure you visit a showroom to get a real feel for the quality and workmanship of the products in their range. If the supplier is a decent one, they should give you the option of talking to (or even visiting!) an existing customer so you can get a first-hand account of their customer service. Here are the questions to ask:
• Do they offer a complete build and install package?
• Ask whether their buildings can be used year-round
• What is it constructed from?
• Will it require insulation, and will it need any regular maintenance of any kind?
• Does it come with a warranty?

Tip 4. Consider where you’ll install it

Think in advance about where you want the building to be erected and what view you want it to have. For example, is there an awkward nook in your garden that can be better utilised? Do you want the building to face east for the morning sun or west to make the most of those stunning sunsets?

Tip 5. Remember the end use

Garden rooms can be a wonderful candidate for housing an at-home office if planned correctly. Remember the fact that you will need an internet connection, lots of plug points and some sources of light! Buying the right garden room can really transform how you live or work in your home. It allows some people to ditch their commute and work from their back garden.

“You’ll find that, in the marketplace, there’s a garden room for every budget," says Nick, "but be savvy and do your homework before you buy to make sure you pick a model that fits your needs, as some are just glorified sheds. At Norwegian Log, for example, we specialise in high quality, eco-friendly garden rooms made from solid log which have high levels of natural insulation so comfortable for year-round use with minimal running and maintenance costs.” -------------------------------------------------------

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

Cressida Cowell's path to her writing shed

Children's novelist and the current Children's Laureate Cressida Cowell is a keen shedworker. She also regularly posts photos of the path to her writing shed garden office throughout the year. Pictured above is the October entry and you can see what it looked like in February and May here.

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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.

Steve Pretty: shedworker (and The Hustle)

Steve Pretty is a musician, perhaps best known as the leader of the marvellous Hackney Colliery Band but he is also a shedworker (the outside of his garden office which he uses as a music production studio is pictured above. One of his most recent collaborations has been with Rhodri Marsden for the marvellous new disco concept album about Brexit, The Hustle (trailer below) on which he plays trumpet.

Here's the full track listing: Piece Of Cake 0:00 Freedom Of Movement 4:47 Let’s Go WTO 8:56 Backstop 13:04 Canada Plus 17:07 Alternative Arrangements 21:48 No Deal 26:26 Hard Is Better 31:10 . As Rhodri puts it: "It’s the musical antidote you never imagined, for the crisis you never wanted."More details and how to buy it are here.

View this post on Instagram

So the very first session I did in my fancy new garden studio shed was for this Brexit-themed disco concept album by @rhodri which has turned out, quite rightly, to be a runaway success. Roll up! #brexit #disco #conceptalbum #brexitmeansdisco #thehustle #article54

A post shared by Steve Pretty (@stevepretty) on Oct 16, 2019 at 7:54am PDT

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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.

Garden office decking

Some advice on this thorny subject from Mark Ramuz of garden2office:

"Three words if you’re thinking of softwood decking: Dont, don’t and don’t. It’s literally a slippery slope in this weather, whereas composite deck stays grippy and looks great. This is Millboard Charred Oak that pairs really well with cedar cladding. We also install a range of grey and natural timber tone." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of which do not require planning

Virginia Woolf's writing lodge at Monk's House

Virginia Woolf planned and wrote her books in many places – she kept a pencil and paper by her bedside to make notes, she often spent her time in the bath sketching out ideas in her head (this is where she came up with the initial plans for The Years), and she also sometimes wrote in her bedroom when she was unwell, resting on a wooden board to write.

But at her home in Monk’s House in East Sussex, she also had two special places in which to write. The first was part of an extension paid for from the profits of her novel Orlando, a garden room with its own outside entrance, measuring 16ft by 16ft and featuring a sink and tiled fireplace painted with a sailing boat and lighthouse design by her sister Vanessa Bell. This was flanked by bookshelves on both sides. The room had lovely views over the neighbouring fields, but gradually this became her bedroom.

Instead, she mainly wrote in a wooden shed that stood in the garden. This writing lodge had the disadvantages that Leonard used its attic to noisily sort apples from the garden and it was also too cold for writing during winter months (at which point she decamped back to the bedroom). But it was improved and moved to the end of the garden under a chestnut tree (though she still clearly heard the bells from the church next door) and here she sat to write using a dip pen and ink in a low armchair with a thin piece of plywood on her lap, typing the results up later on a desk. She particularly liked using blue writing paper. Through the window she had views towards the Sussex Downs and Mount Caburn. The lodge also had a brick seating area in front of it on which she and friends and family would sit and watch games of bowls on the lawn in front of it and the Sussex Downs as a backdrop. During the Battle of Britain in the second world war, the German planes flew low enough over their home that they could make out the swastikas. “Bombs shook the window of my lodge,” she wrote.

    

Virginia wrote mainly in the mornings and it was here that she produced Mrs Dalloway, The Waves, and Between the Acts. Leonard describes her walking out to work at the writing lodge “with the regularity of a stockbroker”. In a letter to her lover Vita Sackville-West, she describes this commute: “I wake filled with a tremulous yet steady rapture, carry my pitcher full of lucid and deep water across the garden.” And it another letter, to her friend Ethel Smyth, in September 1930 she writes: “[I] shall smell a red rose; shall gently surge across the lawn (I move as if I carried a basket of eggs on my head) light a cigarette, take my writing board on my knee; and let myself down, like a diver, very cautiously into the last sentence I wrote yesterday.”

Leonard also points out that his wife maintained a strict schedule. “We should have felt it to be not merely wrong but unpleasant not to work every morning for seven days a week and for about eleven months of the year,” he wrote. “Every morning, therefore, at about 9.30 after breakfast, each of us, as if moved by a law of unquestioned nature, went off and worked until lunch at 1.” On warm days in the summer, she would also sleep there.

Monk’s House is now owned by the National Trust and the lodge is sparse but tidy. It was not so when Virginia worked there, her friend Lytton Strachey complaining that she surrounded herself with ‘filth packets’ as she wrote, cigarette ends, pen nibs, and various bits of paper. Over her lifetime she also had several tables/desks at which she wrote, including one standing desk. Annie Liebovitz photographed the top of her table in the writing lodge for her book Pilgrimage and this clearly shows the surface is scarred with plenty of mug rings and spilt ink. Virginia described it as, “not such a desk as you might buy in London or Edinburgh you see in anybodies [sic] house when you go to lunch; this desk is a sympathetic one, full of character, trusty, discreet, very reserved.”

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

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