Operation She Shed | #3 The Build {Part One}

In January this year, my boy and I finally embarked on the project that I’ve been desperate to start since I began working for myself around a decade ago; Operation She Shed.

I’ve always wanted a dedicated work-space. Having a room in the house is OK but when you work from home — on a full time basis — you can begin to miss the separation between work and home.

Being able to close the door and walk away at the end of the day is something that I didn’t realise I’d miss so much initially. But once the boys were born — and my office became a nursery — it wasn’t long before working from a corner of the dining room began to lose it’s appeal and I began to yearn for a space of my own.

You can buy an 8ft square garden office from ‘just’ £9,999, according to one garden office company. That seems like quite a lot of money for quite a little space.

So to keep the costs down, we bought a garden building that came in flatpack form.

Then with a lot chutzpah — and some moderate DIY skills — my boy and I began the task of building a garden office ourselves, from the ground up.

Everything from creating the base for it to stand on, to boarding it out and insulating it.

We’re not building professionals; we’ve renovated our own homes over the years — and have fearlessly tackles all sorts of DIY projects — but, half the time, we’re learning on the job.

We’ve been hampered by the weather and a huge shortage of spare time, during the build, but — apart from the electrics — we’ve done it all ourselves.

I really wanted to see if it was possible to create a dream garden building, without having to sell your granny to do so. And also demonstrate that you don’t need to be a fully fledged builder either.

I’ve made a little film too, to show the first part of the project.

It wasn’t until I’d been filming for half a day that I realised my phone had a time-lapse function — doh — so I’ve managed to doctor the first part of the film and create a time-lapse effect in post production.

I’m SO pleased with how it turned out that I think I’m going to create a tutorial, later down the line, to show how I did it.

It’s such a cool thing to be able to do. Just speeding the film up didn’t give the same effect — and looked really odd next to the actual time-lapse footage.

Now, when I look at the film, I actually can’t tell the difference! Anyway. I digress.

That’s for another day!

Have a look at how we got on with building the she shed.