Garden Studio

[Puni/Void]

Wow! How did this turn out? Any photos?

[Harrison]

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.

[Harrison]

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.

[J T]

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

[J T]

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.

[Harrison]

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.