As some of you may recall I have been doing a lot of home improvement over the last year or so. It started when we moved our fence and reduced our driveway a little to rearrange our garden layout, which then allowed us to move the shed, a new one from www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk and then create a new patio area where the old shed once stood, which still needs the slabs laying properly.

Our conservatory is finished and erected over the area of our old patio so we haven’t lost any space really and in fact gained some much needed sitting space in the sun as the afternoon gives way to evening. Before this shift around you’d have had to be sitting with the spiders in the shed with the door open to get the last few glimmers of sun.

The decking has had a clean and the mould and garden muck has been scrapped away, although I cannot for the life of me find the decking stain I was going to use on it to give it an extra couple of years life. I bought it, I know that much, but I have either left it at the hardware store or it’s been pinched or tossed away, although I find the last two accounts of where it would be a bit hard to believe as firstly our garden is now like Fort Knox and secondly you wouldn’t throw a brand new tub of stain away. The shed needs to be organised properly and you never know it might just turn up under the old tarpaulin behind the boxes, next to the lawn mower. A bigger shed seems to mean more junk, but that’s my fault not the sheds.

The sprinkler system is in.  The system consisting of one pop up rotating sprinkler which has a reach of up to twenty feet that happily soaks the conservatory windows, much to my wife’s annoyance, all the way to the pergola at the bottom of the garden, the boundary fences and the new patio (to be finished) where the old wooden shed used to be.  The bushes and shrubs around our garden are thriving from the twenty minute consistent watering they get on a daily basis now. Before we left it to the rain Gods to do most of the work, but I put the sprinkler in to the lawn to try and regenerate the scrub land that we had created from all of the construction materials we had left on it during the two or three months of building.

We decided to re-seed the lawn instead of re-turfing it due to the expense, but it is a slow process as we are doing it in sections to allow us and our highly active child to be able to use the lawn whilst we do it. So we have large areas of browned lawn that should have grass sprouting through it anytime now, before we move on to the next dead patch. Once this has been done the back garden will be nearing completion, which is a relief. It’s amazing how much hard work and time you need to put in, but it is worth it. Then next year we move on to the front garden and drive way and the veranda that clings to the front of our property, which needs stripping and staining.

And it all started by my wife saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if the shed was at the other end of the garden so we could actually sit in the sun in the evening?’ Thanks Sweetheart.      

Over the last couple of weeks I have been erecting a fence to extend my garden in to my over large driveway.  Before I had room for three cars and now I have room for two and because I only have one car, although an estate or station wagon as our American cousins might call it, this loss of driveway is not going to affect my parking space. My parking ability will still not improve, however.

This is my first fence erection. I am proud at the fact that I have begun to become my Dad.  By that I mean that he is a builder by trade.  He built his own house and can pretty much do anything, plastering, plumbing, building, carpentry you name it he can do it. Recently he put our new bathroom in.  It only took us a year and a half to save up for it and it took him three weeks to put it in.  Three weeks, you might exclaim, but he did a top notch job. He put real effort into it and for that my wife and I are extremely grateful.

This brings me back to my fence of which I am proud of saying ‘I am building myself.’  After three weeks the first four panels are still standing and the posts are all up right and true, which is amazing for me. It has taken me this long to get this far due to the weather, my Son’s birthday weekend, my anniversary trip away and a pulled tendon in my arm, oh and digging the post holes in the wrong place, hence the bad appendage.

By putting up this fence and turfing the once unused driveway our house will have more garden space for me to mow and my son to play in.  He is now two and his garden toy collection is getting bigger.  By bigger I mean climbing frames, slides and goal posts.  We have a poor lawn now, which will soon become much worse, a wasteland of dying foliage I predict.    
We intend to replace our twenty year old shed, which was falling apart back when we moved in, three years ago.  We are going to get a bigger one and utilise the new garden area for the purpose of repositioning this much needed improved garden storage building. Where the old one stood we are going to, according to my wife, use that space for a patio, seating and barbeque area, by we she means me. ‘You’ve built a fence, you can do anything, Honey’ my reply was ‘Hmmmm’ (spoken in a sarcastic under my breath kind of tone).

Okay, enough, my point is this; when you look at your garden you see the layout set in stone, or soil and flowers if you will. It may be hard work to change things around, my arm is testament to that, but the effort can be very rewarding, not only in accomplishing something for yourself, building a simple fence has made me feel better about myself although my arm is still complaining and I fear I may be over egging the blood part of the ‘blood sweat and tears’ saying at this point, but also you can gain much more from a little shift around.

By utilising wasted space in my our garden, driveway as it was, I can now make use of a larger shed, which no one will really see as it is hidden away by the side of my house and through the laws of perspective I will have a much larger garden and therefore feel like my modest semi-detached house has rather expansive grounds for such a dwelling.  We will acquire a new seating area, yes I gave in to the missus, and a whole new dimension to our outdoor living will open up.  

So next time you are struggling for space, your shed is starting to crumble under the weight of it’s possessions or you feel fenced in (see what I did there?) take a look at how you can move things around and see if repositioning your garden structures could make better use of your outdoor space.

www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk 

The news is full of doom and gloom about the terrible winter we are having, although we are only in the second week of bad weather.  Swine flu has gone, the Iraq war is over and Afghanistan is now a peaceful place once more, or so it seems.  Instead of the news that has dominated the airwaves for the last couple of years we are being bombarded by reports of a small bit of white stuff falling from the heavens which has, once again, ground Britain to a halt in a matter of hours.

The first wave of bad weather has come and gone for most, but the weather people who failed to predict it in the first place are saying more is to come.   One thing comes to mind, other than the fact we all can’t cope with snow in this country, is that there is a stronger need to be able to work from home for quite a large proportion of the snow bound workforce of the U.K. 

Technology has come a long way when it comes to networking and PC based office work.  Computers are smaller, much cheaper and more powerful.  The ability to connect to the office is only a click away and with file sharing and networking more widespread than ever we could easily continue to do our jobs from the comfort of our own home.  I for one could be writing this anywhere and could post it to the internet from on a plane for all anyone knows.

With the snow falling and blocking us all in and industry losing millions daily isn’t it about time we figured out that we don’t all have to lose a day’s pay because we can’t get to the office, especially if we had thought ahead and invested in a home office.  If we had a designated and ‘hooked-up’ area of our home that can easily allow you to work without going to the office then business would continue to run even in the whitest of winters.

But what are the best solutions for home office working? Working from a room in your house may not be the answer, especially when the kids are home from their closed school. A more convenient and more productive place to work is undoubtedly the garden office.  You will still need to be able to separate your home and working environments to be able to keep productivity high.

By utilising a log cabin or converting your garden shed you will be giving yourself that distance from your home without having to leave your property.  Snow wouldn’t be an issue, loss of pay wouldn’t be a worry and we might not be too bothered about the wet white stuff falling so annoyingly during winter.

To view a range of excellent Log Cabins fit for use as a home office visit: http://www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk/Log-Cabins

If you want to go down the shed convertion route visit read our popst insulation: http://www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk/blog/post/2009/12/02/A-Brief-Introduction-To-Shed-Insulation.aspx

BillyOh Tongue & Groove Apex Shed  BillyOh Classic Overlap Pent BillyOh-Country-Plant-House-Potting-Shed

This problem always comes up every year.  You buy a shed, nothing special, wooden framed panel building felt covered roof, but you want to be able to use it all year round and not just for chilling your Christmas beer during December. 

Sheds are much more than just a storage place in the modern garden.  They have become a special part of the home, or rather an extension of the home, where hobbies and activities have taken over from the usual resting place of the lawn mower.

The autumn and winter months are long and cold in Britain, probably not as wet as most people believe, but the cold is the real reason that the shed then becomes a neglected place and therefore a lot of creative time is lost to our dismal weather.  Imagine what all of you artisans could achieve if the shed was a much more inviting place to potter, construct and escape to - if only it was warmer.

Insulating your shed to improve it’s ‘comfiness’ during the cold periods of the year couldn’t be easier.  Using a roll of bubble wrap stapled to the inside of the shed is a nice, easy and inexpensive way to boost the cold prevention qualities of your garden retreat. The stress relief potential is also high, pop, pop, but remember each pop takes a little away from it’s insulating properties.

You can go further though and use products such as mineral wool to line the walls and then plaster board over. But be aware that you’ll probably knock a hole through it in no time so a hard board, OSB or MDF would be more appropriate.  Also the smallest amount of moisture will make the plaster board swell and deteriorate.

Polystyrene sheeting, at about two inches, between the framing will work well too to block the chill. Cover it with polythene, then a 12mm plywood board finished off with paint will protect the inside of the shed and keep it much warmer than if left uncovered. You will also get a handy winter snow scene from cutting the polystyrene sheets to fit the panels, which will impress the kids.

The greatest loss of heat from your shed will come from the floor, ceiling and windows.  Shed roofs can be covered in the same methods as the walls, but make sure you secure those boards above your head really well.  Silver insulation foil could also be included in your packing of the roof to reflect your own body heat back down from above.

For the windows you could go to the expense of fitting double glazed glass, but using UPVC will knock a lot of the heat loss away.  The floor is where most of the cold will enter your shed, also water can make it’s way through the boards if they are resting on the ground or if water is allowed to pool under them.  Raising your shed higher up above ground level, and the lying water, will counter this, but you will also need to consider insulating between the bearers with strips of polystyrene or using carpet underlay with boards over the top on the inside of the shed.  If you really want warm feet you’ll need to invest in under floor heating.   

You can spend as little, and do nothing, or as much as you want to make your little hideaway, or hobby room, or workshop warm for the winter. Consider the costs and the work involved in fitting the shed out and whether you really are going to make the most of the winter months before forking out for insulating your shed.

Until the 30^th November Garden Buildings Direct is offering a 5% off promotion when a customer spends over £100 when visiting and purchase a product from: www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk

What this means is if you are interested in buying one of Garden Buildings Directs beautiful log cabins, such as the BillyOh Frontier ‘Santa Fe’ Log Cabin, with the 5% off offer you will save £72.50.

Click here to view BillyOh Frontier ‘Santa Fe’ Log Cabin:

http://www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk/Log-Cabins/BillyOh-Frontier-Santa-Fe

If you had a wooden workshop in your sights then with the 5% off offer you would save £43.50 on the price of the 10’x16’ BillyOh Lincoln Workshop. 

Click here to view 10’x16’ BillyOh Greenkeeper Premium Workshop:

http://www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk/Wooden-Sheds/BillyOh-Greenkeeper-Workshop

Alternatively if your kids are begging you for a new playhouse then this amazing 5% off offer would save you £17.45 on the price of a Mad Dash Peardrop Xtra Playhouse.

Click here to view Mad Dash Peardrop Xtra Playhouse:

http://www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk/Wooden-Playhouses/Mad-Dash-Peardrop-Xtra-Playhouse

These are just three of the products that offer this 5% off promotion and it is also worth pointing out that all of the prices shown on the Garden Buildings Direct website include VAT and free* UK mainland delivery. To view the full website visit: http://www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk

How can you complain about the knots in wood? Well someone did recently, and it has prompted me to write a little piece about the characteristics of wood.

It seems that this guy wanted the wood in his garden building to be clean of lines, and knots. I can understand this to a certain extent, but when your building is made from European Softwood you are going to get knots. With a thickness of no less than 19mm, in the boards that make up the log cabins, there is no chance of the little bug**ers falling out and leaving drafty holes, so this could not have been the issue.

Then I thought of how a customer would treat a building with no knots and natural lines in the wood to protect it. Surely the building would still need to be coated in a suitable stain or wood preserver, which would help to disguise the appearance of these beautiful natural features?

How can you expect wood to be one hundred percent free of what makes wood so beautiful in the first place. Of course you can buy expensive types of wood that have fewer of this distinguishing marks, but then it would be hard wood and this would be extremely expensive.

If someone wanted such a clean, not sure if this building is made of wood, look then they may not have considered the natural characteristics of wood at all. For instance in the winter wood has a tendency to expand as the moisture trapped within it reacts to the colder temperatures. This then expands the links between the boards of any garden building.

When summer comes around the affects of the higher temperatures make the wood shrink back again. This then affects the contact points of the boards and movement can then occur. Over time this becomes more obvious and spacing may occur between boards making them slightly loose. This is totally natural and very little can be done about it.

Wood also moves in a more lateral way and warping or bending of the timbers can occur. Again this is completely natural, but the interlocking construction technique of log cabin building should minimise these two specific weathering effects as the overall weight of the building presses down on all of the boards giving a strong resistance to movement.

The best thing about wood’s natural characteristics is the fact that it blends an obviously man made structure into the surrounding of your garden so well. Even painted, as long as it isn’t in garish colours and patterns, the building will still sit well in the natural colours and textures of a garden. The grain and the shapes they make on the surface of the cut timbers take away from the straight lines of the artificial materials of some buildings.

Wood is a sustainable building material so the environmental impact of using it can be controlled and lessened and even bettered by the careful management of forests used for timber.

So... why no knots? I don’t understand, because the beautiful aesthetically, natural textures and look of wood appeals to us all. Unless you are making a statement or have a specific reason you wouldn’t put a plastic shed in your green leaved garden, would you or a metal one next to your lawn? I could be wrong of course, but I’ve never seen someone rush out to replace the wooden beams in their ceiling with steel or concrete ones when renovating their home.

So reconsider, my good man, and celebrate the beauty of wood and all of its natural characteristics.

For further information and to view a range of log cabins click here: http://www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk/Log-Cabins

There is also a Log Cabin Buyers Guide to take a deeper look in to this type of garden building here: http://www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk/Article/log-cabin-buying-guide

I’ve always struggled with the concept of gyms. Obviously they are there to help you get fit and lose weight, but fundamentally they are there to make money from us unfortunate people who like cake too much.

I’ve been to a gym, i’ve been a member of a gym. I did get fitter and the weight had started to slide away and, dare I say, I might have even started to tone up – even build muscle. And for my brief time at the gym, once I had gotten over my embarrassment of looking like a wimp in a room full of exercise fanatics, I had started to enjoy going.

Then after a year I stopped going and stopped being a member. Mainly because it cost me a lot of money and I had to book my time and drive too far to get to it. My motivation was not strong enough and my ever emptying bank balance was also informing my opinion that it might not be a great idea to keep going.

However, if I had the facility to train at home and knew that once I had paid for my gym equipment then I could go whenever I wanted and train for however long I wanted without being asked to move on to the next piece of machinery by an intimidating beef-cake of a guy, I might be persuaded to take it up again. After all my jeans are getting a bit tight.

Placing a log cabin in my garden would create the perfect environment for my Log Cabin home gym as I have no spare rooms and I don’t think that the floor would hold the equipment anyway. I’d be able to go at least twice a day, if I desired, and use only the gym equipment I needed to use and after the initial payment I would never have to pay gym membership again.

An added bonus would be the day light and fresh air that I would be able to take advantage of, which I never received when I drove ten miles to the gym twice a week, to help me train longer and more efficiently.

I thought about putting in a plasma screen and a surround sound system for music videos to watch whilst training, a fridge and maybe even a shower, if I could work it in, and I’d be right at home.

For further information and to view a range of log cabins click here: http://www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk/Log-Cabins

Space is of a premium in the modern world, space and time and with the world creaking to breaking point below our feet we have started to change the way that we live our day-to-day working lives.

With the threat of pay as you drive tax looming up on us, getting to and from work will become more of an expensive option and with spiralling fuel prices we may all be soon looking at ways of doing more of our office work from home.

This may not be a bad thing as; ‘...the Home Office Computing Magazine has conducted a study and found out that 96-98% of people who work from home are happier than they were when they worked at an office. And every single one of those business owners said that he/she recommends this lifestyle to others.‘*

The main issue for most of us, if we could work from home, is the distraction of all the things that are there that we keep separate from our working day, such as the TV, games stations, our pets and other things that signify that we can relax and forget about our office life completely when we get home from work.

First of all you have to get over the novelty of working from home and continue to separate your working duties from your home life. This is much easier if you have a designated area to work from. A spare bedroom is normally the first place that people think of when considering working from home.

However, you are still losing a room and when Great Aunt Mildred comes to stay and your office is closed down you once more have to make the hike back to your real office to get on with your day-to-day employed role.

A real solution is to create a space where you can work that takes you a short way from your house and it’s distractions and Great Aunt Mildred, a space that allows you the comfort of your home and its close proximity for amenities and a space that removes the problem of driving to work and all of it’s associated costs and stresses.

By utilising your garden and constructing a Log Cabin home office you will achieve this separation and improve your productivity and improve your health. You’ll even get away from Janice the annoying new girl in HR that keeps bugging you and because the log cabin is situated in the garden you will benefit from the natural daylight and fresh air that often fails to penetrate in to the spare bedroom that you may have previously considered using.

In the end the log cabin home office is the real solution for working from home and you get to decorate it and transfer all of the things in to it to make it an even more friendly and inviting working environment, that you want.

You’ll be able to put more effort in to your work in less time than if you were in a busy office where, generally, there are even more distractions than at home. You may find that you work so well from your log cabin that your boss promotes you for your improved hard work, although we cannot guarantee this.

For further information and to view a range of log cabins click here: http://www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk/Log-Cabins

*Taken from: http://www.articlesbase.com/home-business-articles/increase-personal-productivity-by-working-from-home-office...

The whole world has gone crazy for the environment and so it should. This is our planet and we’ve spent far too long ruining it, which has to change. So the idea of trying to run a manufacturing and garden building distribution company in an environmentally friendly way, or at least as environmentally friendly way as we can, doesn’t take much thinking about as there are plenty of ways in which us humble garden building creators can help to minimise our impact on the environment.

All of our wooden garden building products are made from timber from sustainable forests, which are managed and maintained to perpetuate the supply without compromising the forests that it comes from for a start and not only do we use sustainable timber, but we make sure that nothing goes to waste.

As our buildings range in size and shape from small wooden storage solutions, playhouses, wooden sheds, and log cabins, and timber comes in specific lengths there are occasions when timbers are cut to the precise measurements for a building leaving off-cuts that another manufacturer would just discarded. We, however, take these off-cuts and incorporate them, where we can, in to new buildings or pre-existing buildings that require such lengths of wood. In short we use one piece of timber for two buildings, leaving even less waste.

When chopping and sawing down the timber for the panels and boards of our sectionl buildings and wall boards for our log cabins buildings we accumulate a lot of saw dust. Normally seen as a waste by-product of the manufacturing process we allow it to become a profitable part of our business. The saw dust gets drawn into our extraction system and blown into trailers. It is then graded and dust goes into cat litter manufacture, sawdust “crumbs” go into pet packs for animals such as hamsters and gerbils and the shavings are used in the equestrian market for stables and show rings.

Another aspect of our environmentally friendly manufacturing policy is highlighted by the fact that supermarkets are being forced, by popular descent, to reduce packaging of their products as they are seen as a great contributor to the problem of waste in our country. It’s simple, the less packaging a company uses the less waste is created by the end user. Garden Buildings Direct have always employed the same ethos when it comes to packaging for their garden buildings. Basically, short of a binding strap to hold the sections of the building together in transit and as little polythene as possible for the nuts and screws, we use minimal packaging helping to reduce waste in the same way.

With our mind firmly fixed on helping out our planet we strive to do our bit to reduce our environmental impact. So when you want to purchase a garden building product that you know has not ‘cost the earth’ you can’t do much better than coming to us at Garden Buildings Direct.

The problem I foresee in trying to utilise your log cabin all year round is that in the winter it is cold. No prizes for that one. It does mean, however, that general use of your garden building will start to tail off in late September and over the winter months will stop completely. Who wants to sit in an unheated and very cold building? The answer: no one.

Of course you could fit central heating and invest thousands of pounds in the process of turning your log cabin into a cosy environment that might entice you in once more. But why spend such huge amounts of money in a very improbable manner? Which will reduce the available floor space in your garden building, whilst creating all manner of logistical problems when it comes installing the darn thing. Not to mention the worry of frozen and ruptured pipes in winter. Electric heaters take up less space, but still devalue the look of your cabin and who wants to smell the burning dust that seems to be mandatory with all electric heaters.

A simple and efficient way of heating your log cabin, without spending a fortune and taking up valuable floor space, is under floor heating. Inevitably there will always be a consideration for putting a floor covering in a building such as a log cable, especially if the wife has anything to do with it, such as a rug or even wall to wall carpet. So there isn’t much of a stretch to think about under floor heating that has become a popular solutions for new builds and renovations where similar needs for space saving heating solutions are required.

A 10m square installation kit specifically designed for under wood floor use, such as laminate flooring, will cost you approximately £350*, depending on supplier, with a rating of 150 watts per square metre. As the entire floor acts as the radiator the heat is evenly distributed and therefore becomes more cost effective. This will give out plenty of warmth under your feet for the majority of the Garden Buildings Direct’s log cabins.

*Price correct at time of publishing.