It’s been nearly fifteen years since the building of the home in which my wife and I live. Prior to this home, I had built three others for myself. Our company, of course, designs and builds a wide range of exciting projects, but over the winter I had begun to severely miss the thrill of an all-consuming personal project.
My wife steadfastly refuses to discuss going through the process again. She is supremely happy with what she has — in terms of a dwelling anyway, so, as a good husband, I offered to design a little garden shed for her. She was a bit suspicious but tried to act enthusiastic.
Lancaster County is saturated with cottage industries that stamp out garden/tool sheds, so I spent a Saturday afternoon looking at a variety of very similar sheds (I know it’s a contradiction) and getting a feel for pricing. I then began the conceptual which I played with for several weeks. By the time I had completed the ‘construction documents’, there were twenty-some architectural sheets. A good friend stopped by to weigh in on my progress. He had been a client during my early years. After flipping through the drawings, he commented that I had more drawings for this tiny shed than I had had for his house. He’s probably correct. I sort of did get carried away with unnecessary detail; but, that is, for me, the fun of it. Anyway, here’s a photo of the shed.I should mention that I could have purchased one of those ubiquitous, mass-produced sheds for less money than I spent on just the materials for this shed. But, then I wouldn’t have what I wanted and I would have missed out on all the fun.

– Tony Zaya