Garden DIY

A couple "saved £23k" building a garden office shed from scratch using recycled materials - including insulation saved from a skip. Graham Anderson, 35, and his wife, Rachel, 34, were working from their spare bedroom but decided they needed more space with their four children running around. The couple - who are both architects - set about designing and transforming an unused patch of land at the bottom of their garden into a vibrant garden room - to use as a workspace. Graham, alongside his father-in-law, also called Graham, they spent a year constructing and building their new hub. To be as economical as possible, they made an effort to source their materials from free online ads. They found the insulation for the roof in a skip using Gumtree, the front window they got from an unwanted window re-seller, and the timber was reclaimed with help from the Southampton Wood Recycling Project. Next to the office, they designed and built a shaded patio area with a bench for social functions. Their frugal decision making meant they were able to build their summer cabin for just £12k in total - £23k less than the £35k Graham estimates the build would have cost them had they got someone to do it for them. Graham said he entered the Cuprinol Shed of the Year 2024 competition for a "bit of fun" but says it's a "nice feeling" to be shortlisted in the 'Cabin/Summerhouse' category. Graham, an architectural technologist, from Eastleigh, Hampshire, said: "It's a completely new build from scratch. "We just worked with the amount of garden we wanted to use and we wanted it to also be a sunroom as well. "It was quite arduous - spending a lot of time collecting stuff, keeping an eye out for the right types of insulation, working with unknown quantities and we just managed to make it work without much wastage really. "It's a low energy building as there are lots of layers of membranes which are all taped up and super well-insulated so it's relatively warm in the winter. "Building the garden office as a self-build project was greatly satisfying but also financially essential, we would not have been able to afford to do it otherwise. "It's lucky we had the knowledge and skills to get hands on make it a reality "The competition was just a bit of fun really. "The timing worked out that it was complete enough to submit and I'd known about it for a few years. "It's a nice recognition to get there. "Some small panel had decided that were one of the top three entries in the summerhouse category so that's a nice feeling. "I'm not thinking too far ahead about winning the whole thing though." Graham and Rachel now use the space at least three times a week to work from home. Their children also like to use the space to play with their lego. He said: "We started building in 2022. "Towards the latter part of the pandemic, we realised we had a growing family of two infant boys, a one-year-old and a four-year-old and we were working from home in one bedroom. "So wanted to free up at that bedroom and have other space. "Because we're both architects we didn't want to just buy an old shed so we were always going to design it ourselves and save as much money as possible." Graham and his father-in-law spent their weekends putting together the shed for over a year. He said: "The main interesting component is that we used a lot of recycled materials to be as economical as possible. "One of the windows was a piece of VELFAC and that window was the first thing we bought from a window supplier and then we designed the piece around that. "Every day we were scouring Facebook marketplace and Gumtree for insulation and bits of wood. "We used reclaimed timber from builders who didn't need it, lots of the framing wood that's in the structure came from Southampton Recycling Project. "And we got some bits for free from a landscape architect who wanted to save some of the insulation going into the skip. "For the plywood that surrounds the kitchenette, my father-in-law drilled all these holes to make a decorative ceiling which looks nice in the photos and aids the acoustics. "Ideally I would like it to be even bigger to have more social function." Also in Graham and Rachel's office is a kitchenette with a small sink and an integrated under-counter fridge, which they say "extends the use of the garden room from office hours to become a 24/7 space for the family." They also included LED lighting which can be changed to suit the mood and ambience. You can vote for Graham's build here: https://www.readersheds.co.uk/share.cfm?shareshed=8681 Breakdown of the main costs: Siberian larch cladding circa £600 Bi-fold doors £2.5k Velfac window £460 EPDM roof membrane £170 Paving slabs £500 (Facebook marketplace) Kitchenette units £720 BB grade birch face PLY circa £350 (Facebook marketplace) Engineered timber flooring £250 (Facebook marketplace) Plus approx £7k on other materials