Jane Horne & Simon Bartholomew

SOUTH NEW BRIGHTON

Like many of our Resene Shed of the Year entries, the winning shed has its origins in the turbulent times we saw in 2020. Along with many other New Zealanders at that time, Jane Horne and partner Simon Bartholomew found they were facing a future that was suddenly and shockingly unstable – but that allowed them scope for both change and creativity.

The couple, who are both carpenters, had been renting a workshop and an office in Bromley. “But we couldn’t go in there when everything was locked down,” Jane says. “And that was difficult for us because all of our gear was there. And at the same time we were renting a place to live and our landlady was wanting to sell that because everyone was saying the crash was round the corner.

“Everything felt incredible uncertain right then,” she says. “And that made us stop and ask, what are we doing this for really? We are both in our mid-40s, how long did we really want to keep working in carpentry?”

So the couple sat down and weighed up the costs of rent and overheads of their existing setup. “And you know, it was quite expensive!” Jane says. “And that’s where we thought, right, okay, let’s condense everything down.”

At that time Simon was studying architecture; Jane had trained and worked in interior design in the past.

“And it just felt like a chance to really pursue our dream of working in design,” Jane says.

So they decided – “against everybody’s advice at the time,” Jane says ruefully, “even the bank was like no, don’t do it” – to buy a property right beside the ocean in South New Brighton that was big enough to allow them to carry on doing some carpentry work for existing clients, but also gave them space to build up their design practice.

“The more we thought about it, the more we felt that working from home would make our lives simpler and nicer,” Jane says. “It was much more affordable. Just downsizing our life really! Plus we thought no matter what happened in the future, we would always be able to work, and have somewhere we couldn’t be kicked out of.”

They shifted most of the tools from their 140sqm workshop into the property’s existing three-bay garage, but still needed more space. And so they decided to build themselves a new shed-slash-workshop-slash home office.

That shed is three metres high, three metres deep and three metres wide. The couple’s design included a parapet roof, meaning the walls extend above the roof level. “So you never see the roof from outside and it always looks like a cube.” The walls are LVL timber; the windows the couple built themselves, buying double-glazed glass off Trade Me for a dollar a pane and constructing the frames. The shed is fully insulated and sits on little scaffolding legs, making it a non-permanent structure that can be moved around if they need space on the driveway for extra cars (it can also rest on an uneven surface). “We tried to build it to the highest standard we could,” Jane says. “It’s way above building code.”

But what people notice about it, of course, is the outside. “We definitely wanted it to be a cube,” Jane says. “We just felt like a cube would be really fun. I think that’s where we started. And so we got to the cube and then we thought, ‘Let’s paint it like a Mondrian’. I studied art history in college and I’ve always liked his work and enjoyed how simple and recognisable it is. It happened pretty organically.”

You can see the shed from outside of the property, so Jane and Simon were worried that their might be a little pushback from their new neighbours. But actually, the reaction from New Brighton locals has been really positive, Jane says. People often stop to say how much they enjoy it, sometimes even ask to come onto the drive to take photos. Sometimes people ask if it’s a Rubik’s Cube, Jane says.

“Maybe that will be our next shed!” she says. “We have a million ideas, me and Simon. Our brains do not stop! We love anything fun and adventurous and a bit different. And we love the shed. We had to make some pretty brave decisions over the last couple of years. We did not make them lightly. But we took the plunge for the life we wanted. And we really love our life now. So it’s worked out.”

“I hope we can show people that your garden shed doesn’t have to be boring,” says Jane. “There are no rules about what you can and can’t do.”