Garden room/office/summerhouse – help and recommendations please!

[poppetmum]

Hi there, hope someone can help with this, have also posted in Gardening:

We are looking to build a garden room/office/ summer house at the end of our garden and would welcome some advice and recommendations ? I looked on the web, but there are so many companies I don?t know where to start!

We want to use the building as a room the children can hang out in, that we can use as an office, plus use for some storage. We are looking for it to be used all year ? so would need to be fairly warm /insulated. Our garden is long (100 ft) although fairly narrow, so it can be a decent size.

There seem to be so many options out there that I?d really welcome some recommendations. I?m astonished at some of the prices I?ve seen on-line (£30K!!), so am hoping MNetters may have some good, cheaper recommendations!!

Many thanks in advance

BUMP - I would like to know about this too.

You may need to brace yourself...the last one DH built cost that!

I don't know any companies to recommend but if you are looking to seriously use it all year round then it's going to need pretty good insulation and electrics and that doesn't come cheap. You could always jot down the absolute essentials you require and the size that you'll need it to be and then get some quotes from some local builders. You could then set this against any specialist companies you've seen and see where the differences arise in price and spec. You may find you'll pay a premium for 'specialist' garden room companies...a bit like you can do with a loft conversion.

Sorry I can't recommend anyone in particular...you may need to just dive in there...and perhaps go with some local companies - get them to show you their work.

Have you tried www.shedworking.co.uk? It's run by someone I used to work with, and he's passionate about the subject, and has blogged about it for years - so there's a lot of advice stored on the site, plus all the suppliers.