Waiting times rise for garden offices in Ireland

An interesting article in the Belfast Telegraph reveals that prospective shedworkers in Ireland are in some cases having to wait up to 10 months for their new garden office as waiting lists grow.

Although there are plans to increase the numbers of co-working spaces, the garden office route remains a very popular one. The article gives a brief survey of garden office specialists and their waiting times including Shomera (pictured above) whose waiting list is now up to the end of October, Timber Living Log Cabins (May), and  Ecohome Log Cabins Ireland (August).  More details at the link above.

Those still looking for suppliers have ample resources to do so here on the Shedworking site but over the weekend Kat Burroughs at The Sunday Times put together a nice piece 'How to create a garden office' which also has a useful list and thoughts (£).

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

Snowy sheds 2021

Here's our first snowy garden office post of 2021, belonging to friend of Shedworking teacher Tracy Goodyear. If you've got a photo of your snowy shed, let us know!

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Saturday posts are sponsored by woowoo waterless toilets, the best toilet for your garden office

Lockdown garden office bothy build

Peter Montgomery transformed his Cambridgeshire garage into a garden office bothy during lockdown last year and below is the video showing the transformation plus a tour of the shedworking space. You can read more about how Peter did it, including his use of recycled materials, on readersheds.

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

Mobile Office Support Hub​

An  interesting concept here from Jack Carter Architects, what they call a "mobile office support hub", a kind of halfway house between a garden office and a traditional office which aims to help the health and wellbeing of people working from home. Here's what they say about it:​​

During the pandemic, the focus has been on technology, making remote working secure but if this is to become a long-term option, we feel more needs to be done on supporting staff outside the office. The Office Support Hub is based on new proprietary electric vehicle technology which is being rolled out across the logistics sector. JCA propose designing bespoke mobile office support vehicles, for medium to large organisations across the country.

The whole thing is an electric vehicle, with a metal chassis (what JCA call "a skateboard-style bed") and a timber frame. There's a modular feel to the interior which can easily be reconfigured where necessary. It features all the normal must-haves and features of a garden office with space for two people to work plus ergonomic working arrangements, as well as a break out space, audio-visual room, workshop space. The idea is that each van has a 500km range and can drive out a local area providing services for local employees who can book its services via a mobile app. At the end of the day, it returns to the main head office to recharge.

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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.

Scottish Men's Sheds offer crisis grants

As part of the Scottish Government's package of funding to combat isolation and loneliness, the Scottish Men’s Sheds Association (SMSA) has been awarded 30,000 to support Men’s Sheds in Scotland. The money will assist sheds that are suffering financial problems with running costs such as rent and heating, and which face shutting because of the pandemic. 

“SMSA is delighted to have secured this crisis grant funding for Scottish Men’s Sheds through the Scottish Government," said Jason Schroeder, SMSA’s Executive Officer. "Covid-19 forced our Sheds to close temporarily, calling a halt to much of their fundraising activities and this is impacting heavily on their income generation.  This fund will support new and existing Sheds, large and small, to cover core running costs to offset this lost income.  We will aim to help those Sheds in crisis to give them the peace of mind to ensure they are still here in the future when Sheds will be needed most.

“A huge area of concern is how this pandemic has impacted on people’s health and wellbeing and we need to ensure the survival of our Sheds for when men can attend them again, hopefully in the spring time. This funding has the potential to do so much good.  We will strive to stretch it as far and wide as we can to prevent any closures.”

The SMSA will start to release funds to successful applicants later this month.

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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.

Lovely garden office green roof

A little something to brighten up the start of your new lockdown. Here's what the owner, consultant planner and architectural designer Ian Gunter-Jones says about it: "My first green roof on top of the studio in our previous cottage garden. Chantry row, Aldbury. We planted the roof with sedum plugs, but I made the substrate a little too rich and so the wildflowers soon took over, a happy accident."
 

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  Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of    

contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of which do not require planning

Lockdown garden office build in new Idler magazine

The new issue of the Idler magazine is out. My regular column on sheds is particularly interesting this time round as it includes a detailed interview with architect and designer Damon Webb of Feral Studio who is based in Powys. We talked about how and why he built the rather lovely garden office above during lockdown, and there are some lovely images of it too, inside and out. For snooker fans, there is also my regular column, this time about snooker between lockdowns.

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