Happy Sewing!
My Christmas present to myself was a long awaited garden office. I actually ordered it in September, so it was an early Christmas present really! It didn’t arrive until November and it has taken ages to sort things out. The office had to be insulated as it was too cold to work, despite a heater. I mean, it’s basically a big shed in the garden, isn’t it? My friend came and worked on it for me and showed endless patience when I kept moving things about and adding pictures to the wall, then changing my mind! Anyway now it’s finally finished and I couldn’t be happier. It’s my little oasis of sewing in the garden, Plus I can look out the window and look at my rescue chickens too! Obviously it’s great now, but will be lovely in Spring and Summer, when I can open the door and embrace the birdsong and sounds of the garden.
First things first, I decided where the office would go and in which position. As there were lots of windows, you could actually see through the office from the house into the top half of the garden, much better than having a big wooden structure looking out of place A few weeks later I ordered the slabs and a shed load of cement which took up most of the driveway for quite a few weeks. Now the next problem was how to get the sand from the front of the house around to the back. We have a side passage so had planned to transport the sand in a wheelbarrow. However our wheelbarrow did not fit through the bottom part of the side gate by the back garden due to fixing a fence panel there to disguise the neighbours garden. Great!
So, only one solution, we had to go through the house! Not ideal but no other way round it. All I can say is that at least we have laminate flooring rather than carpet. The mess was amazing and not in a good way! All weekend of shovelling, wheeling and shovelling again. By the end of the two days, we’d had enough, as you can imagine. Plus there was the constant vacuuming and mopping during this time.
I had always wanted a garden office, who wouldn’t? I had looked at them for years dismissing the expense, however since my Etsy shop really took off during covid, I have. like many people, been working from a desk in the house. This involved commandeering the dining table for cutting out and making use of the ironing table which was up permanently. I’d got fabric stashed away in so many places, that I lost count and started to begin to not find things. Okay, that was probably peri-menopause too! I’m an organised and tidy person but eventually this drove me mad! I had had enough! I went with my afore mentioned DIY friend to the local large garden centre and fell in love instantly with the most glorious sage green coloured little garden office. It was as though the gods were speaking to me as until the end of September, there was £1000 off. I had 3 days to think about it. The price was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be and I was pleasantly surprised. As the estate agent said, it will definitely add value to your house, as lots of people have changed the way they work and are now home based, so an office that you can shut the door on at night is a godsend. I didn’t think about it for too long and phoned up and ordered it the next day. A delivery estimation of 10 weeks was given, which would bring me to just before Christmas. Plus plenty of time to lay concrete slabs and sort out the garden.
Next step was levelling sand and concrete to enable the slabs to be laid down properly, which wasn’t too bad apart from lifting 42 heavy slabs! All set for delivery and installation. So 7.30am a few weeks later the installation guys arrived from The Malvern Collection. By lunchtime the garden office was up and ready for action! Not quite, as actually it turned out to be quite cold despite a heater. DIY friend came again and we fitted insulation, roller blinds and a big rug, all from Dunelm. Plus the lighting! Then the next process of moving in! The fun bit! I moved my trestle table desk from Ikea and my fabric cupboard. I needed quite a bit of storage for crafting and fabrics supplies. I needed a large cutting table with storage, however all the ones I looked at were extremely expensive so I had a look around the web and found the Ikea hack website which came up with the brilliant idea of assembling 4 Kallax units together to make a large table. We added castors and an old pasting table on the top. The pasting table had seen better days so I covered it with a Fablon vinyl covering featuring a pink and blue patchwork design. Perfect.
With the addition of pictures, plants and fairy lights, of course, this actually now feels like my own proper workspace. Every day I love going to work! It’s great watching the birds on the feeder, which is just outside my office and the cat occasionally comes in to have a sniff round. I’m very lucky!
Lizzy's Homemade 