A couple claim they saved 23,000 pounds (approx. $30,000) building a sleek designer office shed in their garden from scratch using recycled materials—including insulation saved from a dumpster skip.
Graham Anderson, 35, and his wife, Rachel, 34, were working from their spare bedroom but decided they needed more space with their two 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 new garden room—to use as a workspace.
Mr. Anderson, alongside his father-in-law, also called Graham, 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 dumpster using the online classifieds Gumtree, the front window they got from a 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 approach meant they were able to build their summer cabin for just 12,000 pounds in total—23,000 pounds less than the 35,000 Mr. Anderson estimates the build would have cost them had they got someone to do it for them.
He said he entered the Cuprinol Shed of the Year 2024 competition for a “bit of fun” and that it’s a “nice feeling” to be shortlisted in the Cabin or Summerhouse category.
“It’s a completely new build from scratch,” said Mr. Anderson, an architectural technologist from Eastleigh, Hampshire. “We just worked with the amount of garden we wanted to use, and we wanted it to also be a sunroom as well.”
The project was “quite arduous,” he said, adding that they spent “a lot of time collecting stuff, keeping an eye out for the right types of insulation, working with unknown quantities,” and they “just managed to make it work without much wastage really.”
The space is a low-energy building with many layers of membranes all taped up and “super well-insulated,” making it relatively warm even in the winter.
“Building the garden office as a self-build project was greatly satisfying but also financially essential,” he said. “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 [and] make it a reality.”
Entering the competition was “just a bit of fun,” he said, adding that the timing just worked out so that it was complete enough for a submission.
“It’s a nice recognition to get there,” he said. “Some small panel had decided that we’re one of the top three entries in the summerhouse category, so that’s a nice feeling.”
Although Mr. Anderson isn’t banking on winning the top prize, he and his wife 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.
“We started building in 2022,” Mr. Anderson said. "Towards the latter part of the pandemic, we realized we had a growing family of two infant boys, a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old, and we were working from home in one bedroom.
“So [we] wanted to free up that bedroom and have other space.”
Because they’re both architects, the couple didn’t want to just buy some old shed. They always intended to design it themselves and save as much money as possible.
Mr. Anderson and his father-in-law spent their weekends putting together the shed for over a year.
“The main interesting component is that we used a lot of recycled materials to be as economical as possible,” he said. “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.”
They scoured Facebook marketplace and Gumtree every day 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,” Mr. Anderson said.
“And we got some bits for free from a landscape architect who wanted to save some of the insulation going into the skip,” he said. “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, he would like it to be even bigger to have more social function.
Also in their 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 that can be changed to suit the mood and ambience.
