A COUPLE “saved £23,000” by building an office shed with garden from scratch, using recycled materials – including insulation saved in a skip.
Graham Anderson, 35, and his wife, Rachel, 34, worked in their guest room but decided they needed more space with their four children running around.
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The couple – both architects – set out to design and transform an unused plot of land at the bottom of their garden into a vibrant garden room – to use as a workspace.
Graham, alongside his father-in-law, also called Graham, spent a year building and building their new center.
To be as cost-effective as possible, they have made an effort to source their materials from free online advertisements.
They found the insulation for the roof in a warehouse using Gumtree, the front window they got from an unwanted window dealer, and the wood was salvaged with the help of Southampton Wood Recycling Project.
Next for The officethey designed and built a shaded patio with benches for social events.
Their frugal decision making meant they were able to build their summer cabin for just £12,000 in total – £23,000 less than the £35,000 that Graham estimates the build would have cost if they had someone to do it for them.
Graham said he entered the Cuprinol Shed of the Year 2024 competition for “a bit of fun”, but says it is a “Cool feeling” to be selected in the ‘Cabin/Summerhouse’ category.
Graham, an architectural technologist from Eastleigh, Hampshire, said: “It’s a completely new build, from scratch.
“We just worked with how much garden we wanted to use and we wanted it to also be a sunroom.
“It was very arduous – spending a lot of time collecting things, keeping an eye out for the right types of insulation, working with unknown quantities and we managed to make it work without a lot of waste.
“It’s a low energy building, as there are many layers of membranes that are all glued together and super well insulated, so it is relatively warm in the winter.
“Building the garden office as a self-build project was very satisfying, but also financially essential; we wouldn’t have been able to do it otherwise.
“We are fortunate that we have the knowledge and skills to get our hands dirty and make this a reality
“The competition was really fun.
“The timing was right when it was complete enough to ship and I had known about it for a few years.
“It is a Cool recognition to get there.
“A few small judges decided it was one of the three best entries in the holiday home category, so it’s a nice feeling.
“But I’m not thinking too much about winning it all.”
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Graham and Rachel now use the space at least three times a week to work from home.
Children also like to use the space to play with Legos.
He said: “We start construction in 2022.
“In the last part of pandemicWe realized we had a growing family of two boys, one aged one and one aged four, and we were working from home in one room.
“So I wanted to free up that room and have another space.
“As we are both architects, we didn’t want to just buy an old warehouse, so we were always going to design it ourselves and save as much money as possible.”
Graham and his father-in-law spent weekends setting up the shed for more than a year.
He said: “The main interesting component is that we use a lot of recycled materials to be as economical as possible.
Ideally, I would like it to be even bigger to have more social function
Graham Anderson
“One of the windows was a VELFAC part and that window was the first thing we bought from a window supplier and then we designed the part around that.
“Every day we were searching Facebook marketplace and Gumtree for insulation and wood chunks.
“We used wood reclaimed from builders who didn’t need it, much of the wood in the structure came from Southampton Recycling Project.
“And we got some free bits from a landscape architect who wanted to save some insulation going in the dumpster.
Cost analysis for warehouse office
Siberian larch cladding for around £600
Double doors £2,500
Velfac Window £460
EPDM Roof Membrane £170
Paving Slabs £500 (Facebook Marketplace)
Kitchen units £720
BB PLY grade birch face for around £350 (Facebook marketplace)
Engineered wood flooring £250 (Facebook marketplace)
Plus approximately £7,000 in other materials
“For the plywood that surrounds the kitchen, my father-in-law drilled all these holes to make a decorative ceiling that looks nice in photos and helps with acoustics.
“Ideally, I would like it to be even bigger to have more of a social function.”
Also in Graham and Rachel’s office is a kitchenette with a small sink and a built-in under-counter refrigerator, which they say “extends the use of the garden room from business hours to become a 24/7 space.” days a week for the family.”
They also included LED lighting that can be changed according to the mood and environment.
You can vote on Graham’s build here.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
