Super sheds that put those ready-made shacks to shame

Drying hops in the heart of the garden

Hops for home-brewed beer dry in the shed that Christie-Fogg built from discarded materials he found on job sites and roadsides.

"I'm a pack rat for recycled materials," he says. "I'm trying to tone it down so I don't have big piles of garbage lying around."

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Hilltop paradise

Builder: Jeffrey Tohl

Location: Studio City, Calif.

Square footage: 65

Why the shed is super: Though it has some luxurious appointments, such as a hot tub in the deck, the shed stays humble with its modest scale and low-cost, practical materials, such as corrugated plastic panels and stock redwood lumber.

Architect Jeffrey Tohl graded his steep hillside lot in Studio City, Calif., into a cascade of terraces connected by footpaths and stairs. From the courtyard behind his house, Tohl ascends to a vegetable garden and orchard with peach, lemon and pomegranate trees. Even higher, 61 feet above the sidewalk, sits a redwood greenhouse anchored by 4-by-6-inch posts set in concrete. Tohl built the super shed as a gift for his wife. "Terracing allowed us to have a variety of landscape environments," Tohl says. "The greenhouse is secluded, rustic and private, but you have this amazing 200-degree view."

To make sure his wife could enjoy the view while tending to succulents and herbs, Tohl designed a rectangular casement window that offers a panorama of the landscape and the mountains in the distance. He added a Dutch door so the room could feel open without inviting the family dog to trample the seedlings. To hold down construction costs, Tohl stuck to inexpensive materials, such as $11 corrugated plastic panels for the walls, and joined the crew to finish the job in just two weeks.

Fast work, especially considering the shed's hilltop site: "Everything had to be carried from the street — dirt, concrete, lumber ... It was a colossal undertaking."

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A present with a view

The potting shed built by Tohl overlooks Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Mountains.

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Desert oasis

Just 12.71 inches of rain fall annually in Tucson, Ariz. To collect as much of it as possible, Ben Lepley used reclaimed lumber to build a 400-square-foot water-storage shed in his parents' yard. The structure began as a 700-gallon tank he and his brother fashioned from a discarded 4-foot-diameter steel culvert. Lepley poured a concrete bottom in the tank and rigged gutters and drains to feed into the cistern.

"The tank fills to capacity when just half an inch of rain falls," he says.

But while giving a drink to thirsty desert plants and native fruit trees, Lepley discovered that the hose ran dry while the tank was still half full. He solved the problem — and gained 900 gallons of capacity — by adding a sump pump and a second tank, using gravity to increase the system's water pressure. He also expanded the liquid-collection network to draw in gray water from the showers and washing machine.

"All the water gets pumped up to the water tower, and then it's ready to use around the yard," Lepley says.

Switches inside a vertical gutter pipe automatically shut off the pump to avoid overflow, and a homemade depth gauge, made from a buoy, shows the quantity left in the tank.

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Blacksmith's barn

Builder: Mark Suchocki

Location: Royalston, Mass.

Square footage: 576

Why the shed is super: At Mark Suchocki's Black Dog Forge, hammering a 2,000-degree Fahrenheit iron bar on a 289-pound anvil is a typical day in the shed.

Ever since Suchocki built his first coal forge in 1999, he's been hooked on blacksmithing. "The first winter, I'd go through knee-deep snow to get to the forge," he says.

The forge sat for a year behind his house in northern Massachusetts. But after a subzero day froze the water in his slack tub, used to cool heated metal, he decided enough was enough. In the fall of 2000, he spent $5,000 to build a 24-by-24-foot smithy with a steel roof and dirt floor.

"You have a hot side of the shop and a cold side," he says. The hot side holds the forge, anvils, fly press, chisels, tongs and punches; on the cold side, you'll find the storage racks, assembly table, sanding station and bar twister. Suchocki crafted many of the hammerheads and chisels that line the smithy's walls. "You know you're a blacksmith when you use one tool to make another," he says.

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The feel of the craft

"The feeling you get from taking a piece of steel, heating it and then forming it at will is just indescribable," Suchocki says.

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Slide show:  19 favorite garden cottages and sheds

Bikes in a box

Derrick Pacheco's Phoenix bike shop proves the minimalist credo that less is more. He paid $1,700 to have an 8-by-20-foot shipping container delivered to his backyard in the summer of 2010.

After he spent three months and $4,300 insulating and wiring the box, it became a bike shop and a magnet for the city's two-wheeled community. One neighbor with a broken axle scored a wheel from Pacheco's stash for $10. Another brought in his mom's 1948 Schwinn Hornet, brushed with blue house paint, in need of restoration. After finding the replacement parts, Pacheco repainted and revived the classic.

"The old Schwinn is a head-turner," Pacheco says. "We take care of the customer for the life of the bike. Since I decided to make bikes my career, it has been everything bike — all day."

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Tools and supplies

On Pacheco's assembly line: a brazing station, spare tires and power tools aplenty.

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No plans, no problem

Micky Weber built a 144-square-foot garden escape in North Collins, N.Y., working off a sketch made by his wife, Lynn. "I don't need blueprints," Weber says. He made a jig to assemble cedar-framed barn-sash windows, and the couple laid a hose 200 feet across the lawn to direct water from the house into the shed through a reverse garden-hose coupler.

Lynn Weber spiffed up a bargain-priced plastic utility sink from a big-box store by switching out the standard fixture for a high-neck copper faucet. "We also mounted the sink onto a cupboard," she says. "Now everyone thinks it's a porcelain sink."

Cedar siding, matching roof shingles and a purple-martin birdhouse cupola grace the exterior. "When we built it, over the summer of 2007, a lot of people stopped to see what the heck we were doing," Lynn Weber says. "The day we moved it into place, people were driving by, honking, cheering and yelling, 'It looks good!'"

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A certain look and feel

The Webers' homemade barn-sash windows have leather-lace fasteners; an open cupboard adds a built-in look to the gardener's utility sink.

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Make your shed super

Heat it
Adding a heat source raises safety concerns and makes for more complex permitting. That said, wood stoves are a popular choice, in part because they're available in sizes to suit just about any shed. Most propane units are not rated for indoor use — check the UL listing first. Ceiling-mounted electric heaters reduce clutter.

Wire it
Always specify wiring in your shed plans when applying for building permits. Codes usually require a subpanel to serve the shed's circuit breakers. From that panel, run armored wire underground; 6 inches deep is typical. Where it emerges from the ground, sheathe the wire in a slip coupling to allow movement but prevent abrasion.

Plumb it
Or maybe not. Building departments often consider plumbing part of a habitable structure, as in a small house. A water-free composting toilet can work, but it requires installing a roof vent and running a drain line to an external tank that must be amended frequently with wood shavings and cleaned out twice a year — a dirty job.

Light it
Study the natural light patterns on the shed site before building, and position any windows or skylights so work surfaces receive afternoon sun. Design ceiling-hung, wall-mounted and exterior path lights along with the wiring plan.

Insulate it
For multiseason shed use, retrofit stud and rafter bays with fiberglass batts, sealed under drywall or quarter-inch plywood. In a new shed, plan extruded-polystyrene subslab insulation to prevent the cold from creeping in through the floor.

• Bing Cube: View more photos of stellar garden sheds