Audrey Gelman’s Home Office Is Actually a Garden Shed
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Last year I moved my family to Hudson, New York. Hudson is a beautiful part of Columbia County where the social calendar is lighter and everyone has the same Blundstones.
By leaving the city we gained square footage and a driveway. But I still managed to end up with no office, a problem that had followed me up the Taconic Parkway. Working from bed, as it turns out, is not a long-term strategy, and the state of my winter mental health made this very clear.
That is when it came to me: the vision of a very tiny farmhouse that you could run a company from. Specifically, a 12-by-12 garden shed made by Outdoor Living Today that looked like a Swiss chalet, complete with window boxes and skylights. I imagined lace café curtains and a hand-painted sign that said “Leave Mommy Alone.”
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It turns out that women have been building themselves sheds for centuries. Virginia Woolf wrote at a wooden lodge at the bottom of her garden atMonk’s Housein East Sussex, which her husband noted she “approached with the regularity of a stockbroker.” Edna St. Vincent Millay, who left Manhattan for a farm in Austerlitz, New York (about 25 miles from my house), wrote in a pine cabin she calledSteepletop. Marie Curie discovered radium in aleaky shed in Pariswhose glass roof provided protection from the elements.
I had no plans to discover chemical elements, but it was time to build. I called my friend Pete, who is a contractor, and asked him if he could take a garden-shed kit and make it habitable all year round. This meant pouring a concrete foundation, running electrical, installing a mini-split for heating and cooling, and insulating the walls and ceiling from scratch.
We broke ground in April, poured a concrete foundation, and by May I had anoffice.
Aside from the Mac desktop computer, the most important thing in the room is mykeyboard. It’s a Quantum X98 mechanical keyboard with Blue switches, which means it makes a clicking sound with every keystroke that is deeply satisfying and also extremely annoying to anyone within earshot. The great thing is that there is no one within earshot because that’s the point of the shed.
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The painting of the Dollar Tree, graveyard, and bouncy castle is part of Jordan Sullivan’s“American Psychosis”series.
For file organization I bought an Amish made wooden organizer from Lehman’s. I bought desk accessories including enamel chicken shaped paperclips from Tractor Supply Company. One of my side favorites is the DSNY Trash Pen Holder from OnlyNY and am on the waiting list for theKnicks edition.
Every project I do begins with a cork board, so I bought two. For the rug, a round hand-braided cotton and jute carpet from Etsy in green and white. I hung lace heirloom lace valance curtains on the ten windows.
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The desk chair is from a collaboration between Sharland England and CB2: It’s a vanity stool in rust red which is technically for children but perfectly sized for me.
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On the shelves sit dozens of coffee-table books and old issues ofCountry Living,World of Interiors,andHouse & Garden. The mini-fridge is a black vintage-style Frigidaire full of Diet Coke, apples, and Unhinged protein bars.
Stepping back, the Shed has been more transformative than I’d even imagined. The “Leave Mommy Alone” sign has not been painted yet, but I have not worked from bed for weeks. Thank you, Shed, for giving me permission to close the door and be unreachable, if only for a few hours.
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