Today’s unusual requests are tomorrow’s shed trends—just ask the first person to move their home office to the backyard. However, for shed builders who specialize in custom construction, some requests are a bit too niche to hit the mainstream just yet.
Kent Lapp, CEO and principal of Wood-Tex Products, has seen his share of unique requests: concessions stands, pool-houses, weekend getaways, playhouses, gardening space, art studio, storefronts, road-side stands, dugouts for ball fields etc. One in particular stands out: “We recently had a professor at Baylor University in Texas buy a finished-out shed that he uses strictly for his model train set and village.”
Jason Ellis, chief designer and co-owner of Kanga Room Systems, has worked on his share of shed-turned-recording studios for Austin, Texas-based musicians, but it was another request that stood out for the challenge it provided: “We built one shed that was a little backyard office li e we would normally build, except the owner wanted to have the roof retractable. We put it on a retractable skid system so he could take the roof off and use it as an observatory for the high-end telescopes he kept in there.”
David Ballinger, designer and founder of MetroPrefab, specializes in unique requests. “[I’ve done] “music festival VIP sheds to sheds to be used as bars at wedding venues to rooftop cabanas to temporary school classrooms to pottery studios and yoga studios.”
