Outdoor Office Open for Business

In our house move, and renovation project, I no longer had an office space inside the house so started to look at other options. I didn’t want to be shoe-horned into a corner of the bedroom, take up space on the dining room table having to pack up each night for dinner. Nor did I want to sit facing a wall in the lounge – very uninspiring.

In a lower level of the garden there was a once loved greenhouse which had many unusual plants grown from seedlings, but was very much now neglected as neither of us are keen gardeners, or green fingered.

A decision was made to empty the greenhouse of the hundreds of pots of dirt, take down the structure and replace with a ‘solid’ outdoor office. After some looking around in the local area I chose a 2.5m x 2.5 Garden Room from Johnsons Outdoor Buildings collection, named The Avondale.

The Avondale was erected in the Autumn of 2019 by 2 men who worked in perfect harmony putting together the pieces like a giant jigsaw puzzle. I could not watch as the roofer stood nail gunning the red shingles on the roof through a gap in his feet.

With no injuries, a short wait followed for the electrics to be installed and then the office was ready for use. [Not longer after electric went in I had networking cabling added for full internet services] An initial coat of primer oil based paint was added but it was too cold for the paint and I needed to wait for warmer weather to finish.

I started the ‘fit out’ of my office space with the Alex desk from Ikea in blue. It was the right size for the space plus included a cable cupboard at the back of the desk to hide all the unsightly cables, and has two very handy drawers for office stationery.

As a working space I did opt for a ‘not so glamourous’ gaming chair from Argos after realizing that sitting for 8 hours a day on a kitchen chair was not doing my back any good. My Ranarp desk light was another Ikea purchase, and gives off great light when I am working late into the evening on design work, its as solid as a brick too.

During the early part of 2020 I started to wonder if an outdoor office space where I had to walk across the garden was not the best decision I had made. To make the ‘trek’ easier I had the small patch of grass taken up and replaced with stone, and new steps built up to the office to improve access. [I am not the tallest and the step up into the shed seemed to get higher and higher]

My fully functional office was all set up and utilized on the odd working from home day. Then on March 16th 2020 the London office I work at sent us all home “to work for a few weeks” while the COVID-19 virus moved through the UK.

Needless to say since that day I have worked from my much loved home office, or as I call it, the posh shed ever since. The space is ideal for my desk, chair, computer equipment and printers. I have a couple of display bookshelves for my various Sloth related items, Groot figures and collectibles. When I zoom call with work even after 5 months at home the team still joke I am in the sauna as I have not painted the inside (as yet).

Finally, the outside of the office has been painted and in tribute to my dad I am going to pop a couple of pots outside the door – a nod to the old greenhouse. I am also looking to commission a piece of ironwork for the outside with the My Claybrick Home logo.

So, that’s the story of my Home office.

I would love to hear about your office space and how you may have adapted an used space into your work haven.