Garden Studio

As some of you might know we have been having quite a lot of work done on our house and garden since late last year. Some of this was only due to my late brother-in-law leaving us some money.

We have a very large garden of about 1/3 acre and haven't been able to do too much to the large bottom section until now. We decided with some of the money to have a log cabin built to be used as an art studio and garden room to chill out in.

Since February we have has various work and contractors in to realise this. A lot of the land was quite overgrown where we decided to situate the cabin, so we managed to find someone to clear it all. Someone else we know then laid a concrete base ready, and the log cabin was finally built at the end of March.

We had to wait a few weeks for an electrician to wire it up to the house's mains supply, so we now have electric into the cabin. Don't really well with is own consumer unit and ground.

And we have been spended quite some time painting it inside and out. Hadn't realised how expensive decent paint for these buildings cost. £65 per tin! And the same price for the wood preserver. Needed 2 cans of each. Although we have had enough paint over to do the other existing shed, Tom's tree house, and a new fence we had installed at the start of the year.

I've also insulated the floor of the cabin with some Celotex insulation boards under some funky multicolored laminate flooring. I will also be insulating the roof later in the year before the colder weather arrives.

I bought some armoured and shielded Cat 6 ethernet cable last week and finally had time to install it today. That was heavy stuff. 18KG for 80 meters. The cabin is about 55m from the house, but I ordered a bit spare for another eun I have planned. I ran the cable down to the Cabin alongside the electric wire that was already installed last month. Took some time as it was pretty heavy and I had to unroll it, drill holes and pull it though walls etc. Finally in place and working eventually.

And now the network cable is in place I've extended the wifi down into the cabin, plus a Switch for wired ethernet. I'm added a Sky Q mini box via ethernet too and that works perfectly. I've also setup an amazon echo in there and a Netatmo smart Weather station. So all the mod cons.

Planning on also added a smart alexa controlled electric panel heater for when it starts getting cooler.

Tomorrow I'm laying the last couple of rows of flooring now the network cable is installed. Then I just need to add some skirting, finish painting around the windows and a second coat around the top of the inside.

Then I have to buy some guttering to feed into some water butts, with an overflow into a soakaway. And then later this month I'm planning on laying a patio outside the front of the cabin, and limestone gravel to the side where raised planting beds are going.

So hopefully will all be done by July. I will post some pictures once fully finished, including some showing the progress. Really pleased with how it's going.

Wow! How did this turn out? Any photos? :)

When I get time I will add some. We have used the cabin a lot this year. Mainly called The Studio as it's for art work, but really it's like a garden living room with sofa, arm chairs, TV, wifi, sonos, fridge etc. And my wife added a coffee machine today.

The inside is finished and the outside of the actual shed is all painted, but we still haven't done the ground around the outside yet, so it's grass still, due mainly to time and wanting to get everything else finished off first as we had loads of building work done this year and I've been finishing that all off. Doing the electrics, flooring, carpentry and decorating myself.

I completely forget to add some pictures of the cabin/Studio. It's raining today, but the next sunny day we get I will take some and upload them.

We have really been pleased with the cabin and are so glad we had it built. Because of the pandemic it was a bit drawn out as it took about 6 months after ordering it before it could be built, but the builders were impressive, with 2 of them doing the whole thing in one day.

It took me much longer to finish off, but so glad I spent the time doing a proper floor. Really feels like another room of the house.

We still haven't yet done much with the ground around the cabin. Mainly because I've been doing lots with the rest of the garden, including needing to have another large tree taken down. The plan is still to lay a patio in front of the cabin with some raised flower beds, and a gravelled section to the side, possibly with a stone circle to put a round table and chairs on.

The garden and house are all finally slowly coming together though. The cabin has made us use the bottom garden far more though and enjoy the whole garden. Plus we have an above ground swimming pool by the cabin now too.

The prices of log cabins has shot up now since we had ours so we are glad we bought it when we did. They are easily double what we paid and more. Supply and demand I suppose, with a lot of people deciding to get one during lockdown. Plus the ongoing wood shortage.

But they are a good investment because one that has been built as a proper garden room/office with insulation, electric etc can add £10-20k to the value of the house. So that's a bonus. Although just putting so much time and effort into this we are not looking to move anytime soon.

Sounds neat. There's loads we'd like to do to this house, but money and time are such limiting factors.

Would be keen to see pics

We were thinking of sacrificing some of the garage space under the house to make into a new bedroom for visitors/spare room use, but now we're thinking of getting one of those tiny home type things in the garden for when we have visitors, and also could be used as a kids retreat when they are older, and maybe a home office if required too. Could possibly AirBnB it too, so there's a lot of possibility and it's also likely to be cheaper and quicker than messing about with the garage.

That was why we decided on building the log cabin for a garden room and art studio. Far cheaper then building onto the house and no planning permission. And we have a lot of room in the garden to utilise

But they have shot up in price since we ordered ours at the start of the pandemic. Ours is 5x4 meters with a 25 year rubber roof and cost about £7.5k plus what we then did to it such as the electrics, priming, painting, insulation, flooring etc, so total was just over £10k.

Now a similar cabin would cost about £18k to have installed, and for them to add electrics and make it a garden office would cost about £25k now. So we saved a lot getting it when we did plus doing most of the additional work myself.

I've some tidying up to do around the outside of the cabin, but once that's looking better I will take some pictures.