Shed Diaries: A Shed is Born
/Okay, you’ve all seen the State Farm commercial about the woman who’s she shed catches on fire. For a lot of American’s that’s the first time they heard the term she shed, but I’ve had my eye on a she shed for a while. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you might remember my “lady loft” at our old house. It was a big beautiful attic office where I could overlook the rooftops of our old neighborhood, and daydream. It was my retreat space where I did all my business-y author stuff. It’s why my blog is called “Notes from the Loft”.
Sadly, my space in the new house is not as inspiring as my space in the old house. It’s a low-ceiling-ed room above our garage with tons of storage space in the eaves. It has only one small window, and that’s taken up by an air conditioner because the room doesn’t have any duct work in it. It’s freezing in the winter, and has no view. It’s less like a loft and more like a cave, and not in a good way.
Now, when I say “new house” I mean the house that we bought two years ago. For two years I have been trying to make this space work, or trying to find another space in the house where I can write. It’s a great room for crafts and storage. It’s a tolerable room for the business-y author stuff, but I can’t write in it. I avoid it. I’ll go weeks without going in there. My other options are the basement (still windowless) or the dining room table (great windows but a lot of traffic when people are home).
So, I write in cafes; Starbucks, Panera, Wegman’s or new local favorite Canal Quarter Coffee by Agora. But café writing has its own pitfalls. Sometimes it’s hard to find a table, or parking. Sometimes I find a good table only for it to be next to a group of people talking loudly, people who think that it’s totally fine to take a conference call where they yell into their phone in a public café, Captain Joystick who plays PC games on his laptop cheering or groaning loudly as he plays (Not kidding this guy is a regular at my local Starbucks). One time I was even sitting behind a man who was working on a book about John D. Rockefeller. I know this because he was narrating it at full volume like newsreel announcer as he typed.
Here’s the thing about daydreaming for a living. You have to find a balance between enough distraction to fire your imagination, and too much distraction to stay in your imaginary world long enough to make the words happen. I considered finding an office share near me. Unfortunately, the locally run one closed down, and the chain one in town only offered a tiny cubicle in a windowless room. I mentioned the office share option to my husband, and he said, “If you’re going to spend money on that, why not spend the money on a shed office that will add a little value to the house?” Sometimes, my guy is pretty smart.
I’ll confess, I’ve been dreaming of my own shed, for years. I would drive by those lots full of pretty prefab sheds and just imagine what I would do. I even have Pinterest board of Writing Huts that’s been around since before the Lady Loft. So, this is kind of a dream come true.
We decided that I needed a she shed, shed office, word hut whatever you want to call it. Many famous writers have had them. Dylan Thomas, Roald Dahl and Virginia Woolf among others all had sheds or garden houses of one type or another to write in. So what do I need to maximize my creativity in my ideal writing space?
Windows – I love natural light, and I need windows to look out. It doesn’t have to be a view of a river or the ocean, but trees would be nice, maybe a garden. But windows are a must.
Electricity – Candles or oil lanterns would certainly be atmospheric, but you can’t power a laptop with lamp oil. If I want to spend a whole writing day out there, I’m going to need a place to plug in.
Removing distractions – Currently, my craft space and my office are the same. The trouble with this is that my imagination has a tendency to want to make things instead of making words. So I need the new shed to be exclusively for writing and author business. Preferably with a way to hide the business stuff while I’m writing.
Climate Control – Because I live in the Virginia with a full range of hot summers and cold winters, and because I’ll be storing books in there in addition to spending a lot of time in there, I’ll need to be comfortable. That means insulation and walls and heating and cooling.
Note trees and fence close to our existing shed. Hard to get a prefab shed in here.
Now, my man is handy. He even built us a deck last year. But he also works long hours and has a long commute, so we knew that he wasn’t prepared to build a shed for me. We looked around at several prefab shed options. We found a couple that were sort like The offered some windows, if not all the windows I wanted, and the price of the prefab models are very reasonable. Plus, there is the added benefit of speed. Prefab models are delivered by truck and put into place. Then the finishing can begin.
The roadblock we ran into on this is that there is not easy way for them to deliver a shed to where we want to put it in our back yard. We already have a slab currently occupied by a small, moldy old shed. Eric and I went home to measure the gates in our privacy fence, and the spaces between the trees in our wooded back yard to see if delivery was even an option. We concluded that the only way we could have a shed delivered was to take down and rebuild part of our fence, something we would rather not do if we don’t have to.
Handy man, Eric tearing down the old shed.
Then we found Affordable Sheds. This is a locally owned business that will build a custom shed on your site for just a fraction more than a prefab. Once we sat down for a few minutes with the owner, I was sold. We ordered my new shed office. It’s a 12 x 10 ranch style shed. It will have just the right number of windows, including lights in the door, 8 foot walls, and a big shelf for storing my paperback stock and book festival tent and supplies.
Now, it’s just a matter of getting it built. We tore down the old shed this past weekend, and Affordable Sheds is scheduled to build my new office on Monday 2/3. The electrician is scheduled for the following weekend. Fingers crossed the weather holds out.
Check back here and follow my social links for updates on building, finishing and furnishing the shed.
