Shed of the year 2024, Sponsored by 
I have always loved sheds and have owned one since my 30s. I am now retired and in 2013 I treated myself to a fully insulated and double glazed 'room of my own' - a new blue shed. I looked at many ready made sheds online but decided to design it myself and get a local builder/ friend to build it for me, exactly as I wanted it.
It is a place to paint, draw, read, listen to music, think or meet a friend. It is a sanctuary that I can use through all the seasons, just at the bottom of the garden. I just love it!
It all all started in my early childhood. Some of my happiest moments where spent in small wooden structures. First there were the beach huts hired for our family's annual holiday to Lytham St Annes. A few years later my prents bought a small wooden chalet for weekend use. It cost £200 and was filled with coal, but bit by bit they cleared and cleaned it and filled it with simple second hand furniture and red checked curtains. Perhaps ever since, I've been trying to recreate that wonderful feeling; the simple life and that smell of wood.
I bought my first shed in my 30s and brought it with me to my present home. Pictures of my first Blue Shed Art are on your website. It lasted about 25yrs and served me well, but the lower boards started to rot, the roof began to leak, condensation made drawing paper damp, and it was too too cold to work in the late Autumn and in Winter.
So my new wooden shed, is furnished with up- cycled pieces, including wooden apple crates from Kent for shelves, a metal fence for a notice board, an old teacher's desk, an old stripped chair and a 1960s trolley for my paints and brushes.
My Flickr site Blue Shed Art shows the build of the new shed through al its stages.
