Country House Splendour With Matching Sheds

Posted on  June 5, 2018  in Garden Furniture, Wood

I have recently been involved in a volunteeering project at a large country house.  Strangely it’s one that has not had an aristocractic family installed. Over the years since the very first house was built in 1618, ther have been only three families owning it.  In these 400 years, there has been one major change – from being a rather attractive and very large looking tudor E shaped house, in the 1700s, to the palladian red brick splendour we see today.  The current property is very attractive, small by normal stately home standards – but it does have the massive advantage of being set in a breath takingly peautiful landscape with excellent views from front and back.  This inspired generations to make something spectacular of the gardens.  Together with the victorian greenhouses are some fantastic working sheds.  Some hold garden design courses and the others are now the Education centre for local students.

A Shed Is For Life – Not Just For Lawnmowers

Posted on  May 7, 2018  in Garden Furniture, Wood

In these days of having to use every single scrap of space for housing and community living, it is no surprise that many families are running out of this precious commodity.  The houses we have today are much brighter, more fitted, more comfortable but with growing families, they seem smaller than ever.  I say this but when I was growing up and visiting grandparents, their house must have seemed very big to us but thinking back, remembering their awfully cramped scullery kitchen, and the absolutely tiny bathroom, it wasn’t at all palacial.    Today’s families expect bigger and better all the time and new fitted kitchens are in fact bigger than the entire floor space of grandad’s house.  This is where the amazing family shed makes an entrance – it is fantastic to be able to have a shed for living – relaxing, careers, hobbies, storage (!).  A shed is for life’s supplementary luxuries.

Living Her Dream With A Shed By Design

Posted on  April 8, 2018  in Garden Furniture

Ah the fantastic smell when you first enter the newly installed workplace that has found its way in to my neighbour’s back garden.  Never having been one for tidying up and over exerting herself on the housekeeping front, I assumed that this gorgeous new shed was just to put the acres of overspill that couldn’t be accommodated in the usual places.  How wrong was I.  In fact my neighbour had been on a training course in garden design and having qualified, with flying colours incidently, she was now needing space to run the business.  A space that allowed her to leave her sketches and schematics out on the drawing board without having to roll them up and squirrel them away out of reach of the family.

 

This new venture has been so successful – the whole thing from the planning stage to actually becoming a garden designer hinged on her gettig that shed in the garden – for living her dream.

A Shed Full Of Life And Memories

Posted on  March 19, 2018  in Garden Furniture, Wood

On a recent trip to an ancient relative’s house, there was an urgent need to clear the place and make good for renting as the relative had recently been installed in a nearby care home – with horrifying fees to be paid each month.  The idea was to simply strip each room one at a time and anyone who wanted anything there was to take it home and the rest was to be sorted into keep / donate / trash.    As with much of the house, the pile of trash began to get frightengly huge.

 

Once the dross was sorted, we then had the shed to see to.  But that was so much more fun – a whole life time of gardening experience was there – we so enjoyed that part of the job and we learned more in that weekend than any other time in adult hood.  Such memories and joyous laughter rang out !

A Shed Can Be Designer Heaven

Posted on  February 11, 2018  in Garden Furniture, Wood

I have recently become very friendly with a lady in our walking group – it’s one of those friendships that you can pick up and leave off as time permits.  In the months since I joined in this healthy walking m’larky, I’ve chatted to other participants and then this one lady asked me about a jumper I was wearing, and it went from there.  As I had knitted it myself, I was chortling away about the pattern coming from a particlar magazine from years ago in he 1980s and how I had used it over and again.

 

This tickled her and she told me about her ‘little spot of Heaven’, slightly baffled, I queried this and it turned out to be a shed in her garden, her bolt hole where she used to do crafting, paricularly knitting and designing patterns for magazines.    It would be so lovely to think she might have designed my favourite pattern!

A Shed Could Be The Bringer of Calm

Posted on  January 17, 2018  in Garden Furniture, Wood

Oh how I really need to get into my garage and note everything lining the walls, the floor, every cabinet and even off the ceiling.  It’s true about having so much space but you always fill it.  I know that getting to gips with the amount of stuff that has found its way into the garage, it might help me to sort out the other areas of my life that cause me to have palpitations.

I know how to be tidy.  I know how to clear the junk and get rid of anything I haven’t needed to pick up, let alone use, for the last 12 months.  Yes, I know all that – it’s just putting it into practice is harder than I ever expect.  I need to prune it all down to very little and then transfer the small amount left to a shed in the garden instead.  Life contained and under control!