Mother builds mini mansion in garden shed... to escape her husband and sons!
MOST sheds are filled with gardening tools, DIY equipment, junk, and a fair amount of dust and cobwebs.
But one woman has turned hers into a luxurious – and spotless – ‘mini mansion’ in her garden as a place for some peace and quiet.
For Sonia Walker, who lives with her husband and two sons, wanted a retreat from her male- dominated house. So she shunned the tradition of a ‘man cave’ decked out for DIY, and created a ‘she cave’ sanctuary.
Mrs Walker loves nothing more than to hide away with a glass of wine or enjoy afternoon tea with girlfriends in her upmarket shed.
For less than £1,000, the savvy college worker decorated the inside with bargains from car boot sales and charity shops, fitting it out with chic antique furniture, paintings and dainty ornaments including a white bird cage, busts, gilded mirrors and golden candelabra.
She also has a grandfather clock, which cost just £25, a record player, a velvet chaise longue and a cream chair and footstool, with strings of flowers finishing off the decoration.
Mrs Walker’s husband Andrew, 54, built the shed – which even has a fireplace – for her 50th birthday in the garden of the home they share with sons Bradley, 21, and Ben, 19, in Rushden, Northamptonshire.
Mrs Walker said: ‘I absolutely love my “mini mansion”. It’s my little sanctuary, a real girly domain.
‘Andrew and my youngest son both have motorbikes so they could have built a shed for their bikes. But it’s lovely Andrew has given me my own space. The most expensive thing was the wooden flooring. I get a real buzz out of upcycling and recycling.’
Mrs Walker’s shed is one of 32 shortlisted for Cuprinol’s Shed of the Year competition, which this summer will go head to head in the Channel 4 series Amazing Spaces Shed of the Year.
Other entrants include a shed turned into a cinema, a chapel, a hedgehog hospital, a shed with an underground bunker and a ‘whisky HQ’.