Although they look like a stiff breeze might send them airborne, I think they would work quite nicely for anyone who wants to work at home but doesn't have a room of one's own to dedicate to work. They're not free - a little under $10K at today's exchange rate - but I would be most delighted to have one. After all, it's something I've been waiting for my entire life.
As any of my siblings can attest, growing up in a house that was way too small for its population, I was always fantasizing about and designing "my space." There were tw
o variants. In one, I just had an armchair (comfy, chintz), floor lamp, and bookcase set up in the attic crawlspace above my (shared) bedroom. That the crawlspace was a) inaccessible, b) wasn't really crawl space, as it wasn't designed to support any weight didn't deter my constant fantasizing about having my reading room.My more elaborate room was patterned after the sleeper cars our family sometimes used when we went by train to Chicago to visit family. I had it all worked out I how could convert the bathroom shared by 5 kids to a fully functioning apartment for myself. My bed would fold down over the bathtub. The toilet (lid down) would be my reading chair. I'd have a mini-fridge where the hamper stood. Built in-cabinets for my stuff. And a fold-down stove top over the sink. There. Maybe there wouldn't be much room to spare, but I'd have everythinig I needed.
As life would have it, I married a man who's mildly claustrophobic. He likes big spaces. Open spaces. I like cosy spaces. Small spaces. And so I sit blogging in my mini-office, a 5' x 8' glorified closet that I call home office, while Jim sits watching a re-run of a Larry Bird era Celtics game in a living room ten-times the size.
I know that I will go to bed tonight figuring out just how I would design my little garden office. If only I had a little garden to put it in.
4 comments:
Garden offices are indeed big business over here in the UK - I produce a pdf 'lifestyle' magazine for shedworkers (and other homeworkers) plus run a blog at http://shedworking.blogspot.com which I think you would enjoy.
Cheers,
Alex
Hi,
As Alex mentions in his post, there is a real explosion of interest in working from garden offices in the UK. When we first started in business http://www.hut-garden-offices.co.uk around 5 years ago there were about 8 companies in our sector, now there are around 45!
Many of our own clients have taken to working from home either in a self-employed capacity or with encouragement from their employers.
The introduction of 2mb+ broadband in the UK has opened out new options for working from home, something we think is likely to continue alongside advancing technology to create a real/virtual work enviroment at home.
The majority of our clients have realised that they are now free to complete almost all the tasks they would in a traditional office but from a garden office at home.
We have designed garden offices for IT consultants, music and radio producers, architects and academics, musicians, remixers, television editors and web designers. It's a real cross section of careers and age groups which seems to suggest that this is a movement across all business and not just one sector.
Strolling down the garden to work beats tackling the mosh pit that is the public transport system in the UK!
The certainly are a lot of companies to choose from. I have been working from a building by http://www.garenberg-garden-offices.com/ for about a year now. I find the separation from home fantastic. It helps concentrate my mind to be away from all those distractions in the house. But this also works at the end of the day too when I lock the office up and properly finish for the day rather than keep dipping back in the study to answer the odd email.
We produce a range of garden offices which are perfect for working from home. They allow a separation between work and home and can free up a room in the house. We have just developed a diy garden office which is fully insulated and comes with electrics. It even has an optional green planted roof.
Of course they can be also used as summerhouses, gyms, music rooms etc.
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