Some interior shots of my garden office as it starts to become a place to get some work done rather than be worked on!

Desk/worktop now installed after a hiatus of a week or so… Although there’s still work to do its actaully starting to feel like a real work space…

I’m actually doing some work out here, the broadband signal seems alot better today than last time, and enjoying a nice bottle of London Pride to celebrate!

This is my first post actually from the garden office as it nears its completion, the broadband signal is absolutely awful so I’m going to have to think about boosting it somehow, plus its almost pitch black in here now, and I’m wishing I bought the cheap solar shed lights I saw in Wilkinsons the other day! I’m also pretty sure there is a fox sniffing around outside, so maybe it’s time to go indoors for tonight…

I hate cutting Jablite, it sets my teeth on edge…

We’ve been away on our holidays to South Devon as well as working on the garden office when I’ve been able to fit in the time, so there has been progress, but I hav’nt had an opportunity to update the blog until this morning. I’m pleased to say thatthe roof is now on, although it was a bit of a race against time getting the roofing felt underlay put on before we went away to provide a bit of basic protection from the elements. Still undecided what to finish the roof with, I’m thinking cedar shingles at the moment, but need to do a bit more research…

Anyway, here’s the latest batch of pictures…

Corner windows

External view

Door on

Window in place

Roof on

Starting to panel the ceiling

Insulating the roof

Through the Zen window

Panelling and insulating the interior walls

Tongue and groove walls going up

Walls and apples

Inside view

Front view

Windows

Jack laying the floorboards

a cut up rubber mat (99p from Wilkinsons) used as a damp course between the concrete base slabs and the pallet base

Front frame and floorboards in place

Frame taking shape

First window in

Window

View from upstairs bedroom window

Small window located at what will be desk height to give a ‘zen view’ of the pond whilst working…

A few weeks ago I looked at my now decrepit wooden greenhouse and wondered exactly where I was going to start with regards dismantling it. My question was answered when I reached up and lightly pulled one of the roof support struts and it disintegrated in my hand - the whole structure was even more rotten than I’d thought. Within half an hour I’d basically deconstructed the whole thing apart from a couple of still rather solid uprights attached to a couple of concrete posts. However I did neglect to take any ‘before’ pictures as the whole event happened so spontaneously, which was rather a shame. This week my son Jack and I removed the last remains of the old greenhouse and leveled the ground. I also went round to the local MOT place and scrounged 8 tyres, still with hubs intact, that I intended to put on top of 8 paving slabs to use as ‘piers’ on which the whole structure could stand. However once we laid them out in situ I realised that these would actually make the whole thing far too high off the ground, so after much effort getting the tyres home one by one plus getting my sister’s builder husband to drop off several bags of hardcore and rubble with which to fill them, the tyre plan is now abandoned…

I struggled to carry 8 of these tyres home from the local MOT garage only to find that I didn't need them after all. Still I'm sure they'll come in handy for something...

So probably now we will just build the office directly onto the paving slabs with some kind of waterproof membrane (maybe strips of the tyres if I can cut them up??) to rest them on? Anyway, today Jack and I have been levelling the slabs using some of the afforementioned rubble and some ‘gone off’ cement to adjust their heights, and this afternoon its off to B&Q to start pricing up the timber.

The closest so far to ‘detailed plans’ for the garden office, sketched on the back of a bit of scrap paper the other day, but good enough for my purposes of getting down the basic structural ideas.

Ideally all the building materials would be recycled, but the logistics involved in arranging to pick up scrap timber from Freecycle donors is just too challenging as a non-car owner (plus I’m finding that despite there being some 3000 members of Westcliff Freecycle, people just don’t seem to respond much to ‘wanted’ posts these days…), so the next best thing will be to use FSC certified timber and have it delivered, but at least what I obtain will be exactly the spec I’m after rather than bodging and ‘making do’ (which i’ll probably be doing enough of anyway…).

I’ve set myself a budget of £500 which is fairly notional, and looking at what I think I need is probably too high for basically a series of timber uprights and quite a bit of cladding plus insulation materials, but thought better to overestimate rather than under, and if anything is left over it gives me permission to buy a rather expensive CD box set I’ve got my eye on (well I’ll need to listen to something on the stereo once its all built and up and running won’t I??)

What I’m going for is basically going to be a free standing structure, using a large pallette scavenged from a skip as the base (it was almost too big to go out of the back door so we had great fun trying to manuevere it outside) which will rest on top of 8 old car tyres (a trick I saw at the Sustainability Centre in Hampshire a couple of weeks ago - they have constructed a number of yurts on platforms resting on top of car tyres filled with rammed chalk) which in turn are resting on top of a base of paving slabs, so plenty of distance and protection from the ground and its dampness.

I’ve also done another little sketch in order to work out the angle of the roof and how the solar panel might be mounted.

“The allotment and its makeshift sheds are seen as one of the last bastions of individualism against the onslaughts of the professional designer, and against municipal tidiness and imposed order” - Ward and Crouch, ‘The Allotment, its Landscape and Culture’, 5 Leaves books, 2007.

Thanks to Simon Wallace for the following;

Shed Appeal

On a cold winter’s day in late 2008, amateur artist, Mary Wallace from Westcliff-on-Sea, was looking for something interesting to sketch in pen and ink. Following a chance visit to her local allotment site, inspiration arrived in the form of that classic self-build, the SHED!

A resulting series of “shed portraits” proved really popular with plot holders at Westcliff Land Cultivation Society’s (WLCS) allotment site. Demand was such that copies of her black and white drawings also featured in a recent edition of ‘Dig This’, the WLCS newsletter. (available online at www.wlcsallotments.org.uk)

Drawing for donkeys

Word spread quickly across the site, with further interest from plot holders keen to have a one-off portrait of their favourite building.

Sketching for fun and relaxation rather than profit, Mary exchanged the resulting drawings for cash donations to SPANA, a veterinary charity that provides practical care for around 400,000 working animals (and the people who depend on them) in eight countries in North Africa and the Middle East. (www.spana.org)

Arty-folks Vs Artichokes

Growing up on a farm in north Essex and claiming to come from a long line of bodgers, Mary feels sheds reflect aspects of the owners character in their designs. Plotters tend to have a healthy interest in the “make do and mend” culture, often recycling whatever is to hand.

The results can be a slightly ramshackle self-build, but each one is different and individual. Anything goes and allotment sheds remain highly visible and interesting examples of architectural anarchy in an all too ordered world.

Shed sell-out?

There is talk of shed greetings cards and a calendar, but for the moment Mary is content with supporting SPANA through sketching and simply chilling out down on her “shed-tastic” allotment.

If you are interested in supporting SPANA visit their website above, or e-mail me at cybershed2007@hotmail.com, thanks, Simon