At Insideout we design and build highly insulated, outdoor living and working spaces; from garden offices to granny annexes. Over the years we have discussed in detail what people want when they decide to build a garden office or annex in their garden, rather than extend their house in the traditional way. They want four things: -

1. They want to separate part of their life from the main house. Typically they want peace and quiet at the bottom of the garden, if they work at home, or they want to dispatch the children to the bottom of the garden so that they can have peace and quiet in the house.
2. They want a building that is warm, dry and environmentally considerate.
3. They want something that is skilfully built.
4. They want good us to use top quality building materials.  
5. They want minimal maintenance.
6. They want to be looked after during the design and build process.

Our clients are often people who have looked at building a house extensions or garden rooms using traditional “wet” building methods i.e. bricks and mortar but have found that building traditionally is either too expensive or not appropriate for their needs. They want something that creates less mess whilst being built and that has less environmental impact. They want something that is quick to build. We respond to this by building using timber frame construction combined with high levels of eco-friendly insulation to provide a dry, stable atmosphere that requires minimal heating.

People love light and light is always an important factor in a garden office. Our buildings are often used for painting or just to take advantage of the garden sunlight, so we install Velux roof lights and design wooden windows and doors of all different shapes and sizes, with low-e double glazing, to capture the light.  

70% of our clients are concerned about the environment. The 30% that aren’t get an environmentally considerate building whether they want one or not! We  source building materials locally wherever possible, and look  for suppliers who show environmental integrity and small carbon footprints. We avoid plastic where possible. We clad the buildings with scottish larch and roof the buildings with cedar roof shingles. Both are maintenance free. The windows and doors are finished with low toxicity water based stains to create a building exterior with a very small environmental impact.

InsideOut Buildings Ltd (Garden Offices.) is an active member of Ethical Junction, learn more

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 4:24 pm and is filed under Lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.