To buy a summerhouse?

[furrytoebean]

We have a medium sized garden and at the bottom of the garden we have space for a small summer house 6ft by 8ft (or we could move the shed and get a bigger one).

We don’t have tons of money however we could do it without going into debt if we don’t go on holiday abroad next year.

For some reason I have woken up desperate for a summerhouse, I imagine myself reading in there with the rain against the roof, eating my supper in it in the summer months, meditating in the morning wrapped in a blanket.

I’ve never thought about one before but it’s taken over my brain!

Am I just have a blip or is a summerhouse the answer to the prayer I never knew I prayed?

Or will I use it once and never go in it again and wish I had gone on holiday?

i have a garden room, it is insulated, has power and lights, is in cedar and it cost us £10k 10 years ago. It has proper foundations and it was built as an extra room/office as we moved into a smaller house than we had.

i still work out there every day, it also has a treadmill in there for my OH when it is raining, we have a lakeland clothes airer out there also for when it is raining, and all our records and Cds are in there. Plus loads of work filing.

Ours is 4m x 3m.

Oh, this thread is great. I'm hoping to do this in my small, narrow back garden so that I can keep a sofa, books and my lovely guinea pigs in there. It'll be a sort of reading room/petting zoo just for meeeee!

Does anyone find they have a problem with mice or rats if they have either a shed or a garden room??

We have a small one - it was here when we moved in it we never use it. We use it store store garden stuff an every year promise to clear it out and give it a new lick of paint but we never get round to it. Maybe this year we will pigs might fly

We went into a garden centre to buy tomatoes and came out with a summerhouse.
Not exactly but we saw one and decided we wanted one so looked and bought an 8ft by 8ft one. I did wonder if we would use it much and we use it nearly every day. We have electricity in it so a small fan heater keeps it warm in the snow and the fridge keeps the wine cool in the summer.

We love our summerhouse.

We've got one that we use as an office to run our business from, but I have designs on it for when we wind up the business in a few years.

It's not spidery if you seal it properly and we've got a heater in there so it's cosy.

When I'm sick of doing paperwork I make a pot of tea, get a book to read and dream of one day putting a sofa in there.

And it cost just under £1000, but we did put the base down ourselves and spent a day erecting it.

How much was yours john ?

I don’t have kids so I meditate twice a day and spend about an hour a day reading

Oh god the envy

And to get to do that in a Summerhouse

Where are you in the North OP? We are getting one installed this week. It is 8x12, fully insulated garden studio type thing and is costing around £5k. This is with added extras such as electrics. The company doing ours in based in South Yorkshire and will travel a little. They put it up for you completely and they look great. I think you could manage something for £3k.
We are not having abroad holidays this year or last because of small children who travel badly so this goes some way to justify the cost.

Ha! I know.

I struggled to conceive for years and then thought ‘fuck it, I’m just going to spend the money I would have spent on kids having nice things.’

I work part time from home too so I can imagine working in there sometimes.

Ooooh that’s really good!
I could probably stretch to 5k if needed.

I’m in Newcastle though so might be too far north. Do you mind sharing the company?

Definitely do the siliconing and spider proofing, accept that it is another room to clean, and then totally do it, it will be a great space. If you don’t need the holiday and can swing it.

I work part time from home too so I can imagine working in there sometimes

Okay now you are just showboating

Maybe a bit

the shed itself cost £1300 delivered and assembled by two nice young men. Its on a patio so we had a good flat base but its set on a wood plinth so the wood base doesnt get damp. The electrics were expensive because I have a long garden and the location of the fuse boxes in the house so getting the supply out of the house, that was around £1000 including labour, the light fittings, consumer unit and all the cabling etc. My electrician isnt the cheapest but he does a good job.
I already had a room size rug which just about fits and two small oil filled radiators which have been more than enough to heat it when needed over the winter. I've spent about £200 on the insulation materials so far but might need a bit more. The insulation I've used does need covering for fire safety reasons so I'll either use hard board or cork tiles ( handy for the dart board ) but haven't priced that yet,
I reckon with various bits n bobs it will probably be in the region of £2.5 to £3000.
I suppose the shed itself is quite basic but that means you can spend as much or as little as you like depending on what its used for. At the moment its being used by a gang of smelly teenagers so I'm not going over the top with interior fittings, hence cork for the walls. But I have got my eye on some very snazzy coloured perspex for the windows - both for insulation and to prevent breakages. I'm going to get two or three colours, it will look great in the sun. When it becomes the ladyshed I have grander ideas.
To answer another posters question, its been there are year and no evidence of rats or mice but we do have a cat and not much gets past him. I think a hedgehog may shelter underneath it sometimes but I quite like him.

I like your idea Ted- a potting shed has great windows. I’m going to copy that!

Do the windows make it colder? ted

In my dream life I would have one of these

yes I wanted one of those knitwit!

We really havent noticed it being cold. They had a sleepover in February and were fine with one radiato. I have put blinds up and a thick door curtain across the front because the door is the draughtiest bit.

I built mine from scratch, out of 45mm timber. It’s 5.5x3.5m and has an annexe on the side, so that’s where all the storage is and the consumer unit for power etc. It’s insulated in thick kingspan/celotex underneath the floor and above the roof purlins, rubber roofed on top. It’s not damp at all and as it’s painted the expansion/contraction is much reduced so no gaps have appeared.
I use it every day as an office/electronics workshop and radio shack.
I had a blacksmith make me a nice little wood burner but my bookcases take up too much room now! I was aghast at the cost of using electric heating so have just fitted a Chinese diesel heater and that gets toasty in no time and uses barely any fuel.
Not sure I’d build another myself. The basic structure and base were done in two weekends but everything else took ages.

Gosh that’s very impressive field

My diy skills pretty much end at putting up simple flat packs so I might give that a miss

urrytoebean Sun 16-Jun-19 19:47:44
How much was yours john ?
It was £1865

someone on my allotment site built a beautiful shed out of pallet wood and doors from a reclamation yard. It took them a few weekends but it really is fabulous, way beyond my diy skills

My parents have one. We use it a lot. We have lunch and supper in it in the summer, DD (6) uses it as her art studio, I occasionally use it to go and do some work in away from the DCs, the dogs lie in it in the summer to get shade. I love it.