It is March 2020 and the world is about to change forever. Little did any of us know what we were in for last year, but in every situation there is always opportunity. Opportunity to learn, grow, try new things; at least that is how I viewed the situation.

We had discussed designing an building a garden room for sometime but with two young boys under the age of five it was proving hard to find the time. Then suddenly we had all the time in the world as we were forced to stay at home. With the most beautiful spring I can remember, the opportunity to work in the garden was too great to pass up.

It all started with the repair of a fence that had need attention for sometime. Once this was complete and I still seemed to have time on my side the realisation dawned on me that this wasn’t a flash in the pan, this was reality for the foreseeable future. So I quickly knocked up a design for a new garden room.

Materials were scarce and purchasing online with home delivery was the only option. With long lead times up to 4 weeks from purchase it really was the first time I have ever taken so much time to really enjoy the full journey from design to build, taking care and time to soak up all the details and lessons this project would provide me. And so the journey started one cold April morning as I cleared the land and began to flatten the area for the garden room. With the help of my two sons and their toy diggers, I was enjoying the process already!

Once the land was leveled work could start on the 4 x 2″ timber base frame. As I mentioned materials were really hard to come by as most business were closed and I couldn’t get the exact materials I would have liked. I would have preferred a treated timber for the base and studwork, but as the base frame was to be raised off the ground on ‘stilts’ I felt it would be ok to buy regular timber and just treat it myself.

Next the sterling board sub-floor, this was ordered from Wickes who during the lockdown proved excellent for delivering materials, the longest I had to wait was around three weeks but as I say this was a different time, a time were time stood still.

After the sterling board was fitted I added a waterproof membrane to stay on the base until the garden room was water-tight. Luckily though it was only called in to action twice in nearly two moths, as I say it was the most glorious spring.

Then the fun part could begin… the stud-work. The garden room I designed for the space would be an overall length of 6.5m x 2.1m, so there were a number of reasons why I chose the stud timber. The first was that I was doing this build on my own so although it needed to be structurally sound it also needed to be light enough for me to handle. The second was that 65mm x 38mm was the only stud timber that I could get hold of at this time!

Stud-work complete, time to board it out now, again I chose to use an 11mm OSB board for the outer wall. Once the boards started to go up, I decided to re-think the design of the windows, and decided to open up the left hand side to be a large corner window, by moving the ivy bush on this side of the garden room. Again this was a real benefit of the slower pace lockdown, the fact that I could change the layout without it impacting on anything was brilliant. With the studs adjusted and the boarding finished it was really starting to feel like a little room.

It was time to Tyvek housewrap the garden room in a breathable, waterproof membrane, and also at this stage put the EPDM one piece rubber roof on. This was glued down with a waterproof glue, up to 100mm short of all edges, then the final 100mm glued down with a contact adhesive.

Treated timber battens 25 x 38mm were then added around the structure, these would provide fixing points for the larch cladding and step it off the tyvek housewrap to add an extra layer of protection from the elements. Larch was sourced and also a black metal cladding to be used around the rear of the garden room. The black corrugated steel looked fantastic against the larch.

It really felt like I was on the home straight now to get this garden room watertight and the external finished. I made a solid oak frame for the corner window and order the two double galsed units along with french doors for the front. When the corner window went in it was just fantastic, this was the main feature of the garden room and when inside literally framed the beautiful garden. this would be a view you could enjoy any season.

Now for the final feature of the faced of this garden room, the french doors. Due to the situation and the fact I wanted them to be anthracite grey, there was a 10 week lead time on these doors but once in place they were definitely worth the wait. In hindsight I would have just used these as the only door into the garden room and saved a lot of time and money in doing the door on the side face. This would have allowed for a larger window down the side also. But hey ho, you live and learn.

Now with the work to the exterior complete, I could crack on with the interior. First of all the entire garden room was insulated with 40mm thick kingspan material, floor, ceiling and walls. The an internal vapour barrier was applied. A professional electrician ran cables for sockets and lights back to a fuse box. The 12mm birch plywood was applied to the ceiling with 6 x LED slimline lights. The walls we coved with plaster board and joints plastered and painted. The waterproof sub-floor was added and a vinyl parquet till laid down. And hey presto our very own larch clad, cosy and warm garden room. Adding extra space and extra value to our little house.