HOME ALONE
Forget man caves, she sheds are the latest gendered retreat
The opportunity for women to be alone — and unattainable — for a little while, without leaving their properties, is what author Erika Kotite celebrates in her new book, She Sheds: A Room of Your Own (Cool Springs Press, 2017).
In the book, Kotite profiles a variety of sheds, built or remodelled for women in the U.S., the U.K., Australia and Europe. They reflect different purposes — from an artist’s studio to a potting shed — and a variety of styles, but all are designed as backyard getaways for women seeking some privacy, space and a place to “hear themselves think.”
“It’s probably dovetailing a little bit with the man caves trend,” says Kotite, who was editor of Victorian Homes, and Romantic Homes a few years back, and brings her aspirational style to this somewhat practical book. (One chapter is a how-to on building your shed).
The difference between she sheds and man caves, says Kotite, is that man caves are “predominantly in the house.”
“It’s kind of interesting,” she says.
“Men were nesting in the house and women were leaving the house, and I think it started with gardening sheds. A lot of women are passionate gardeners, and men too, but it was making a potting shed cute, making it pretty.
“And from there it went, well, if this can be a potting shed, it can also be my writing studio. Well, if it can be my writing studio, maybe I can do my art there, and close the door and my kids are in the family room having fun and I’m close enough where they can reach me, but far enough away where I can be alone.”
The range of styles was one of the nicest surprises for Kotite.
“When somebody pictures a shed, they picture those vinyl, very plain boxy sheds you can get at the big-box home-improvement stores,” she says.
“But then when I started seeing all the variations of sheds, styles like the rustic and the vintage and the modern, what surprised me was the gamut of styles that exist for a relatively simple concept of a shed.”
Sheds are generally thought of as being highly practical, says Kotite, built with a function-first approach, so she says she found it delightful to see the elaborate creativity that was being generated.
“These buildings start off so practical,” she says.
“They’re built for tools, they’re built for storage, they’re built for really unsexy occupations, and then when I see Tamara, in Australia, with these beautiful large canvas art pieces that she does, and Jenny in California, with her organic paints and her YouTube video tutorials that she does because so much light is coming in from all of her glass windows, and a greenhouse roof that was really neat to see.”
Fine artist Tamara Armstrong, whose modern shed is located in the Gold Coast hinterland of Queensland, Australia, and mixedmedia artist Jenny Karp are just two of the colourful personalities Kotite profiles in her book. Their use of large windows, or a lot of them, was something Kotite found to be key in successful she-shed design.
“Windows are so critically important,” she says. “It’s almost one of the most important things on the list for a she shed.”
Turning a practical hand to this project, Kotite agreed to build a she shed (with help from her “very handy” husband), so she could truly understand what was involved.
“There’s just so many hidden things that you don’t expect,” she says. “For example, the shed we built was a kit shed, but kits aren’t a 100 per cent complete, you still have to get roofing materials, you’re probably going to want bigger and better windows, so you just need to know that it’s going to balloon a little bit from what you initially expect.”
The cost involved in building a she shed can vary as much as peoples’ preferred design styles, says Kotite, but if she had to approximate, remodelling an existing shed can be as inexpensive as $500 to $1,000.
The kit shed Kotite tried her hand at cost around $3,500 all in.