Louise Bamford Oak Designs
What type of outdoor building do you have? I have a three bay oak framed cartlodge garage which has a handmade claytiled roof with a rear catslide and a home office/gym in the third bay. It is clad in oak weatherboarding which has been treated with a Sadolin woodstain to match the house.
Is it practical or is it for pleasure? It is a multi- purpose building used for practical and leisure purposes as I use it for parking my cars and storage for my garden implements, as well as a workplace and gym. I move the table tennis into the garage in winter so that we can play whatever the weather.
How do you spend your time in it? I spend my time in the home office working from home when I am not in my main office, which is some distance away. A couple of evenings a week and at weekends I use the gym section as I feel it’s important to counterbalance my work with a healthy lifestyle.
If you were going to redesign it – what would you like to add? If I was going to redesign it I would add Velux windows to the office and a pair of oak doors with a partition to one of the garage bays. I would also add photovoltaic panels to the rear catslide roof to help cut energy bills.
Tim Edmunds Film Maker
What type of outdoor building do you have? I have a building that was sold as a ‘pool house’, which I got the company to modify slightly to fit in with the other buildings. I added a porchway to the front and a little ‘cat-slide’ to the back. It is weather-boarded, with a tiled roof. It looks good and fits in perfectly.
Is it practical or is it for pleasure? It is a purely practical building. With a reasonable sized garden, I need a large range of tools to deal with all the jobs – these live in the shed, from my ride-on mower to spades, forks, rakes to strimmers, dibbers and dobbers. Also produce from the garden dries out in the shed and is then stored for the year ahead.
How do you spend your time in it? I spend my time in the ‘shed’ working – sharpening tools, laying out produce for drying, chitting potatoes, charging batteries for horse-electric-fences etc. It’s definitely not a leisure building!
If you were going to redesign it – what would you like to add? An enormous plasma screen, bar, vast staff, Jacuzzi… actually, NOTHING! It is set up, and functions perfectly, as a working garden shed, with a clear role and job to do. Happy.
Louise Bamford, Oak Designs
Tim Edmunds, Film Maker
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