Little house on the patio: This all-purpose shed is easy to build and long-lasting - storage shed in garden - Brief Article

Sunset, April, 2002 by Jim McCausland

Sometimes, one thing leads to another. For instance, this garden structure started with an unusable slope. Architect Bari Thompson of Lake Oswego, Oregon, first created a level terrace, then installed a patio. Thompson, an avid gardener, used the patio as the platform to build the little house shown above.

Instead of buying a barn-style prefabricated shed, Thompson chose to create a structure that would fit in with his home's architecture. To facilitate construction, he made it 8 feet square, which allowed him to use standard 8-foot materials; he cut the door down to 6 feet. All the materials came from a local home supply center.

So that the house would last a long time, Thompson says, "I wanted to use the most rotproof materials I could find." For the walls, he chose 1/2-inch cement backerboard, instead of plywood, and, for the floor, concrete patio blocks. Standard stud-and-joist framing rests on pressure-treated 4-by-6 beams, which serve as footings for the load-bearing side walls.

The roof is covered with composition shingles. Gutters channel rainwater into a 44-gallon plastic trash container, which serves as a cistern supplying the sink inside--an inexpensive plastic storage bin with a drain hole drilled through the bottom. The flower-filled window boxes, irrigated with the rainwater, are made from 1/4-inch backerboard screwed onto a cedar frame.

Painted with masonry paint, the little house holds tools and cheerful garden art. It's a place for potting up annuals and retreating from spring showers; in autumn, bunches of flowers dry on pegs in the rafters.