ShedBuilder’s Outdoor Storage Sheds

There are thousands of shed designs available on the market. You would think everyone would be able to find exactly the garden shed they dream about. But the truth is people have even more ideas about their yards than the shed designs available. If you are one of those creative people you may have problems finding exactly what you want.

Customizing A Ready Shed

For people who don’t have much experience in do it yourself project, don’t have much free time, or just don’t want to get their hands dirty, it’s most recommended to purchase pre-built outdoor storage sheds or at least shed kits.

What can be done to customize such storage shed? Here are few ideas:

• Painting. Putting your custom paint is a great way to give uniqueness to your outdoor storage shed. If you have fantasy, you could combine different colors, drawings and more.
• Isolation. If you are planning to store expensive items or things like food in your shed, you may improve it by adding custom isolation. Doing this is very popular for people who use their sheds as greenhouses.
• Customize around the shed. The pre-built sheds don’t allow you to change much in the shed itself. But you can customize the things around it - the pathways, the vegetation around it and many more. Imagine what a great combination you could achieve with a good timber shed, a pergola and beautify green pathway to it.

If that is not enough, maybe you are one of those people that prefer to do things themselves. If so, read below.

Customizing Shed Plans

The best option for people like you is to buy shed plans, preferably online, and build the storage shed yourself. The plans usually come with instructions what materials should be used, but here is the first place where you could be creative. Once you have the plans, you can use them for almost any other material - of course, with small adjustments.

Working with plans gives you one more advantage about customizing your shed. You can just make adjustments to the plans and see how the shed would look before you actually do anything. That’s why I suggested you to use downloadable plans and not paper ones. You can find the ones I like most here. Using a design software you can see how your adjustments will effect the shed without wasting any materials!

Design Your Own Shed

Of course, the most straightforward way to the shed you dream about is to design it yourself entirely from scratch. If you have never done any sketches and never worked with software like AutoCad, you will need first to learn how to do that.

If you already have more experience, be careful about several common mistakes that enthusiasts do when designing their first shed:

• Don’t forget the costs. People who want to design their dream shed often do wonders in the software design programs and then realize the shed is too big or too hard to build in the real world. Don’t forget that there are materials and actual work involved in building your shed - a design may look great on the screen, but can you really implement it?
• Match the design of your house. You may be very creative when doing your design but if it is not compatible with your existing house and yard, that will be waisted effort. Of course sometimes you can achieve great result by making the outdoor storage shed stand out with different design, but that requires much more experience and talent in design than most people have.
• Functionality is most important. Of course your outdoor storage shed must be beautiful but don’t forget that the most important is its functionality. When designing, think well what you are going to store in your shed, are you going to stay there yourself and where it will be placed.

Outdoor storage sheds give everyone the ability to customize them to their needs. Just decide what level of customization you need and go ahead with some of the options I suggested above.

Buying outdoor storage shed is not some minor purchase that you do every month. Sure, it’s not like buying a house and you hopefully will not need to get a mortgage for that. But it’s still a purchase that requires careful planning. Here are several very important things to consider when doing that:

1. Do the designs match?

2. The shed price

I didn’t put this at first place, but clearly it’s a very important thing. You should balance between price and quality so you buy a quality storage shed without going broke. Most “standard” outdoor storage sheds do not exceed few thousands dollars in price. If your budget is lower, you may think about buying a shed kit.

3. Shed material

The material which is used in producing the shed determines a lot of the quality measures and of course the price. I recommend you to check the timber sheds vs metal sheds article before taking decision on the material.

4. The Size

Of course bigger sheds cost more, but the most important thing is your shed to meet your need. So first decide about the shed’s purpose and then calculate what size will be enough for you. If you are going to just store things inside, a tall and narrow shed will do a great work and will come cheaper. If you plan to use your shed as a greenhouse, you’d better plan your funds for a large wooden shed.

5. Ready shed or a kit?

If you are handy, like to build things yourself, want to save money and want to have bigger choice of outdoor storage shed designs, you may prefer to buy a kit. It takes some time to build a shed from kit, but that’s a cheaper and more creative way to obtain such a building.
Some people go as far as just buying shed plans and doing everything themselves. This is an option only for these who like and know how to build things themselves.

6. The place of your shed

The choice of the shed design and size depends also on where you are going to place it in your garden. Of course, if there is no much space there, you should select a small and tall shed. On the other hand, if the shed is going to be situated under a tree or electricity cables, it can’t be too tall. If there is a lot of Sun on the shed’s place you’d better select a timber one. If there is a lot of water - prefer a plastic shed. I think you got the idea.

Imagine yourself sitting in the middle of your garden with a laptop a glass of juice and surrounded by trees and nice smell of wood. Working like that is the dream of most of us. And this is an easy to achieve dream - you just need a large timber shed in your garden and you are ready to go!

What Shed Is Most Appropriate For A Green Office?

The answer is short: wooden! No other material is as nice, healthy and beautiful as wood. If you have read about outdoor storage sheds before you probably know that they can be made from different material. But if you are going to use yours as a garden office, forget about that - only timber shed will do the work.

The second important requirement is of course large. If you are going to stay inside with a computer and chair, you need your shed to be at least as large as a small room. 8′ x 12′ sheds can do the work, but I would recommend you slightly larger one especially if you are going to keep various stuff inside.

Other Requirements For The Green Office

The use of outdoor storage sheds as office is quite common, but still it’s not their default purpose, so you may need to think a little more. First and most important is that you will need electricity to be connected to your shed. Water is not that important as you can always go outside to the house or the garden sink.

If you are going to spend long hours in the shed, think also about additional isolation. You may get addicted to staying there so making it more sustainable on very hot or colder weather can help you feel comfortable. I do not recommend putting air condition in the shed, but a simple fan may not be a bad idea.

Finally, people who create home offices want them to be beautiful, so same is valid for the garden office. Pick a good looking design for your shed so you can be really proud of your green office.

If you decide to build your office shed yourself, make sure to start with high quality shed plans.