Log cabin recommendations

Agreed.
This will definitely be a job for someone else as I’ve zero interest in lugging concrete down the side of the house and up to the garden.


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I though it was /is ok to site a temporary building close up to the boundary. The temporary building could be a greenhouse, garden shed or summer house, the word temporary being the important bit. Once a " garden shed " is in place, who knows what it might be used for!

 

I thought I'd resurrect this thread as in my typical fashion despite me originally saying "I'm not really looking to build something from scratch as I don't have the time/interest to do it", I'm now building something from scratch and have made the time and become quite interested in building it!

After numerous recommendations from folk on here and a few mates I'm going down the self build timber garden room route as it'll hopefully mean I get a better finished result than a prebuilt log cabin but without spending £30k on getting someone else to build a garden room for me!

I've gone as big as I can with this as I might as well while I'm at it. I'm going for a 6m x 3.5m with either a timber or composite clad on the front and metal cladding on the back and side exterior walls to keep building control happy. I was pleasantly surprised how helpful BCP council were with answering my questions.

So over the winter I completely cleared the garden and ended up taking 2 6 yard skips worth of stuff out of it (the fence also decided to give up the ghost during the various winter storms we've had!) to get back to a clean slate:


I ordered all of the timber from "The Timber Group" which are only about 5 minutes from me. The difference in price for the timber from various suppliers was staggering, with Sydenhams wanting nearly double what I ended up paying. Plenty of room out the front for all the timber to sit for the next few months:

 

The self-build group I've joined use a rod based system to build off which works great for me. With our tiered garden and awkward distance from the front road trying to get concrete pumped in would have been a nightmare. I would have also had to spend a huge amount of time digging down and levelling our garden. We got the rods all concreted in a few weeks ago, even this was damn hard work as the footings go down to a fair depth and I hit various patches of abandoned bricks and pottery.


We then levelled off the nuts on the rods and built the main frame (new fence also finished up here!):

 

Floor joists all fitted:





100mm insulation:


And then last weekend's job of getting the floor boards all done:




I'm hoping to get some of the walls built this weekend next .

 

Free wife labour init.

 

Duh...
Those pictures dont take themselves..

 

Nice work..
Looks like a brilliant system..

 

Works really well for the self build option and allows for mm perfection getting the base level.

 

Any more details on rods, do they have bases or just stick um in the concrete and hope they don’t sink down , I have a shed to rebuild/ replace and the wooden posts I used as foundations rotted out due to clay ground and no real drainage

 

there's a big ol' square plate washer towards the bottom of the rod in the concrete to stop it wanting to smash through the concrete

 

Looks great. I’m hoping to do something similar (but not so large) and at early stages with planning & building control. Could you point me in the direction of the self build group you’ve joined. Thanks. Hope it goes well

 

This is the group: Oakwood Garden Rooms Self Build DIY Group | Facebook
The guy has masses of really helpful videos on Youtube, this playlist is a good starting point: How to build a garden room on your own with very few tools - YouTube

 

There are also screw in posts if your not on stoney ground

 

How have you stopped the insulation from falling out the bottom of joists?

 

There's two slate battens screwed to the underside of each row of joists.

 

Ah, not shown in pics.

Why slate and not wood?

 

Roof battens..

 

Ah sorry poor choice of words! Wooden battens that you'd typically use for a slate roof.