My She Shed dream

For the past few years I have bugged husband for a dedicated creative space. I wanted it for storage of my mountains of art & craft stuff plus a place to attempt some right brain magic. In short – a she shed.

However, renovating this old house took priority. That did not stop me from filling my “she shed” Pinterest page with inspirations and dreamy spaces of other lucky ladies.

The large hardware chains here in South West France ie: Leroy Merlin and Castorama, have limited kits suitable for a she shed conversion. I did a lot of door kicking and cheap flimsy window knocking only to come away disheartened. 

Optimism is a required quality for a French renovation. However, finding a reasonable kit with real windows to let in the light and my views all at a price I could afford continued to be a major fail. France has not yet come to terms with the growing wish of ladies for a dedicated she shed space. Lawnmower and tool storage are well catered for – what a surprise.

Rickety thin walls and thin plastic windows at silly prices was all I could find. As usual our renovation challenge kept me to a cheap and cheerful budget that would look expensive.

It was time to look beyond France and its limited offerings in the budget range.

Planning permission in France

A quick call to our planning adviser guided us to a maximum of 20 square metres and a roof height of 1.8m to keep permissions simple – a Declaration Prealable.

Any larger than this would require a full building permission – a costly and complex procedure as well as affecting our annual house taxes and the time frame.

Update at 2022, we now do pay land tax on my little space. It costs us €147 per year but worth it.

First challenge- Where to put it?

Whilst the kit search continued – the location decision was tackled. By the lake, pool or the dumping place?

This decision was easy. Cleaning up of this area was another matter. Husband and I had steadfastly ignored the site since taking on this reno project six years ago.

The area to the east of our new annex and pool area, behind a half height old stone wall was a dumping ground. It had been or centuries. Mountains of old tiles and trash, numerous animal and bird pens squeezed around a space where annual bonfires have raged for generations. Many visits to the tip later plus bringing in the digger and dumper and Husband and we started to make some progress. 

My she shed plot faces south to our lake and east to another with neighbouring vineyards to the west. With beautiful views it is an area that is both private and not too far from the house. The area was an under utilized 200 square metres of our two hectare space.

Whilst not offering much shade, the old maple nearby would help in summer. Landscaping will eventually solve this problem.

What to do with those old roof tiles?

Mountains of old roofing tiles were recycled to be the base for the foundation. After measuring our area and while waiting for the permission to build to be issued, we decided to crush the old now redundant roof tiles to make our hardcore base. Smashing these into a pit was strangely therapeutic. Husband then arrived with the heavy duty tools to finish the base.

Now a bed for my she shed to rest on

Next – the foundation. Nothing extraordinary here – husband and I and the trusty concrete mixer and elbow grease (and plenty of cups of tea).

All machinery needed were on hand due to our original Reno budget planning – https://www.ourfrenchdiy.com/?p=292

Many of the building instruction websites showed sheds on slabs, but I wanted something much more stable and permanent.

Delays in the permission being issued had husband tackling the mess of rocks behind. After a day of hard grunt, a fabulous dry stone wall appeared which further defined the space. Laurel hedge was then planted above and the landscaping project began. However, this is still a long way to go on that front.

Finding my she shed

Eventually, I went to Google and started my search further afield- from UK to Scandinavia and even USA. 

Finally, I found a brilliant site in Germany with cost effective solutions and began choosing the one for me.  The fact that they would not deliver to France did not deter me as I knew I would find a cost effective solution. Have a look at these: http://bit.ly/2N4Bqhg

After many phone calls with Gartenhaus and their patient answering of my many questions, we decided to go with their German engineering and manufacture.

The other dreamier ones available in other countries were forgotten. Hefty prices and complexities of construction had me re-think my expectations.  Whilst I loved the ones with dovecotes/pidgeonieres, complex decorative roofing designs and fully insulated walls and floors, I knew husband would have a heart attack at the five figure+ prices of them.

My She Shed Wish list – defining my decision

Seeing what a big budget could get, it was reality time. Finesse the wish list! (Compromise!)

I knew I wanted my she shed to have:

• French doors – on two sides if possible taking in the east and south views. My real dream was full concertina doors on at least one side
• double glazed glass
• thick-ish timber walls for added insulation – minimum 40mm thick.
• attractive roof line that tied in with the house and had a bit of heritage feel to it – not the boring cheap flat ones from the hardware stores.
• The ease of construction – something husband and I could do together.

The construction plans on many of the garden building websites were a quick hint at the work involved. Kits needing a number of burly men that would drain our sensible (tight) budget were avoided.

My chosen she shed kit

My chosen kit had me having to work with our local Mayor and prefecture on this one.  Ooops. Complications eventually came into play with our Declaration Prealable but it was worth it.

We had two choices in wall thicknesses, 44mm or 70mm. We chose the thinner. It still twice as thick as local shed kits. Also added to the order were treated timber and bitumen roofing tile kit options. There were many other add-ons we could have included. The sticking point was that they would not freight it for me. This was sorted out independently and the order placed. A bottle of local bubbly was opened to celebrate.

Excluding the freight (don’t ask) it cost at just €3000 for the entire kit. This was including floors, double glazed windows, premium roofing kit etc. A bargain.

Was construction easy

In short, no! This was because of a milling error in the wall beams. We did not realize until we were three layers up. Husband re-jigged the remaining beams and we were up and running in no time. However, those few millimeters of error at the base came back to haunt us at roof and window installation time.

The instructions were reasonably clear although mostly in German. Lots of diagrams and drawings of the various components helped, as did my basic grasp of their language had us breeze through the translations.

All in all – we got there. One very clever husband and his enthusiastic side-kick wife got this up on our own.

The finished product – et voila!

Still to do – works in progress!

Now I have my space the surrounds need to be tackled, such as the concrete surrounds gardens and greenhouse lean-to.

The picture above is my next she shed project and my attempt to use up the many square metres of floor tiles we left over from the house renovation. It will free up space in husband’s barn plus be the base of the planned outdoor day bed. I will post a picture as soon as it is completed.

Thanks for bearing with me on this long story for such a little project that has been worth all of the work. For me, it has been worth it. I love it and crafting and art already flowing out of its doors.

Update 2023

Hoping you can see the Tree of Life mosaic feature at the front of my she shed. The gardens and willows are coming along. All plants were propagated from other areas of the garden with an occasional gift from friends. The butterflies and bees in spring and summer are amazing.

Another upgrade was a small air conditioner. We really should have paid more attention to insulation options.

Update 2024

I love my she shed. Now a hive of activity of wet felted creations. Stay tuned for more news on this. The joy of felting will be uploaded from December 2024.