Art school garden office

 

 

This is the arts studio headquarters in Frome, Somerset, of Studio 61, the garden office-based business established and run by Max Ryan who runs it from a sizeable Garden Affairs design and build. She teaches art classes here as well as running a photographic and picture framing service.

 

The large log cabin comes in at 9m x 4m with a pitch roof, additional roof and floor insulation, three skylight windows, and two open trusses. There are an additional two internal rooms, used as a cloakroom and office space. Here's what Max says about it:

"A garden studio has so many advantages over a rented space. I could design my studio to suit my needs, and Garden Affairs were totally responsive to my ideas, even altering the design as the process unfolded. The commute to work and the overheads are non-existent and I am able to enjoy the beautiful surroundings of my garden as I work. The final advantage is perhaps the most important, my dog, Howard, is able to join me every day as I work!"

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

 

Outdoor reading room

A simple but delightful garden building space in Oxfordshire (close to the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang duck pond). It's a Kew Victoria garden room model from Malvern Garden Buildings in a large, lawned garden.

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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.

Shedworking and ChatGPT

 

In the spirit of technological adventure, the Shedworking staff have had a little play on Chat GPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI and hyped all over the planet as a gamechanger, seachanger, etc.

Naturally, first of all we asked 'What is shedworking?' and here's the reply:

Shedworking refers to the practice of working from a small outdoor structure, such as a garden shed, that has been converted into a workspace. Shedworking is becoming increasingly popular as more people seek to create a dedicated workspace at home that is separate from their living space. Shedworking can be a cost-effective and environmentally-friendly way to create a home office or studio, and it can provide a peaceful and productive environment away from the distractions of the main house. Many people who work from home find that shedworking allows them to balance their work and personal life more effectively, and it can be a great way to take advantage of the benefits of remote work.

An impressive start. Then, more egotistically but less successfully, I asked it to talk about me. First of all it misgendered me (not something that I find upsetting but others might do), then it described my latest book Rooms of Their Own as exploring "the creative spaces of 84 different women artists, writers, musicians, and designers, including Frida Kahlo, Virginia Woolf, and Zaha Hadid" which is totally wrong. So I asked it who wrote my book Menus That Made History and it suggested Alexis Soyer. And it then offered Jane Kemp as the author of my The Book Lover's Joke Book.

I tried it with some friends and it was equally random, indeed worse than simply going to Wikipedia. I don't think we're there yet with AI chatbots which, I hope you agree, is a good thing. 

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SMART designs and manufactures industry leading garden rooms from our very own Suffolk factory and installed all over mainland UK

Garden office without walls

An interesting concept from Fermob Contract, a variation on shedworking which doesn't actually require a garden office. Instead the concentration is simply on working outdoors without walls, shared open-air offices which they say create "spaces that are welcoming, favouring discussions and sharing between employees". To this end, they offer a range of modular tables and desks suited to outdoor work stations.

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Malvern Garden Buildings offer a premium collection of garden buildings, displayed at 11 UK showsites.

Garden office decking

Decking is one of the most popular add-on elements of a garden office build. Here's an example of a particularly complex one over several levels as part of a Booths Garden Office QC6 garden studio erected on a steep slope, put together by the company's regular collaborator Well Decked Out.

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Monday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, contemporary living spaces offering premium quality, bespoke buildings without the hefty price tag

 

AA Milne: shedworker

One of the most popular children's books in the last 100 years was written in a shedlike atmosphere. In his autobiography What Luck!, AA Milne discusses how When We Were Very Young was written during a wet holiday in North Wales in 1923 with another family and various other invitees:

"It rained continuously... In a week I was screaming with agoraphobia. Somehow I must escape. I pleaded urgent inspiration, took a pencil and an exercise book, and escaped to the summerhouse. It contained a chair and a table. I sat down on the chair, put my exercise book on the table, and gazed ecstatically at a wall of mist which might have been hiding Snowdon or the Serpentine for all I could see or cared."

Milne says he had a "fixed determination not to leave the heavenly solitude of that summerhouse until it stopped raining" during which time he focused on writing poems which had been commissioned by a friend for a magazine back in London.

"I had eleven wet days in that summerhouse and wrote eleven sets of verses," he wrote, and then they returned to London, he kept on writing, and by the end of the year he'd produced enough for the book. Sadly, the Shedworking interns have been unable to track down an image of the summerhouse.

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

Can you buy a garden office through a Limited Company?

Adding their own thoughts to this often-asked about issue is Farnell Clarke in a useful piece on their website. They look at a range of issues from corporation tax allowances on the construction of a garden office and reclaiming VAT on the cost of a garden office to 'What if I close my Limited Company?'. Here's a snippit:

If/when you choose to perhaps close your limited company, and it owns the garden office which you will be keeping, you will need to purchase it from your company. It will need to be bought at the market value at that point (remember if your company is VAT registered to consider this for the sale too). It is often a good idea to have a restoration clause at the end of the contract.

It's well worth a read via the link above.

Image courtesy Garden Spaces

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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.