Gypsy Wagon Shepherd Hut Archives |Tuin : Tuindeco Blog

A customer has sent me today a CD of their pictures of our shepherd hut, Gypsy Wagon. This is their pictorial story of the arrival, installation and final finishing of their shepherd hut that you may enjoy, the finishing is of particular inspiration if you have, or are considering this building.

Knocking down an old shed

Preparing the ground

Perimeter is marked out

Shepherd hut arrives.

Well packaged and delivered with a de-mountable forklift

Shepherd hut Chassis

Main outside rails and chassis is installed

All the cross members and rails are in and the floor can be laid

Floor and veranda is laid

Walls and front and rear ‘apexes’ are fitted

Roof hoops are fitted

Steps and veranda parts are installed

Roof boards are nailed onto the hoops

NOTE:

The beauty of our Shepherd huts / Gypsy wagons is that they can be customised to whatever you want and this is why so many customers buy our buildings and several businesses exist because of it.

Up to the picture above this was a standard install and now it gets interesting.

Mr U now started to make his own modifications and changes. The following is non standard and not supplied by us but may inspire your own build.

Ignoring our supplied roofing felt Mr U is using a corrugated roofing material

Paint starting to be applied in traditional colours

Additional battens in the walls and laminate flooring is installed. An electrical circuit is also now in place.

A stunning oak laminate floor fitted on top of the standard floor

Insulation boards fitted in the wall panels.

Timber clad lining is being fitted

Tongue and groove timber lining – we can also supply lining boards of 18mm and 27mm.

Lining complete and starting to paint for the final finish.

Further painting

The finished Shepherd hut / Gypsy Wagon.

There has been a huge amount of work in this project but with building of this standard often sold in excess of £10,000 a little work yourself can pay off if you have the time and DIY skills.

These are the finished pictures:

Frosted glass motif in the rear window

A stunning writing desk feature

Looking towards the rear of the shepherd hut – an amazing finish.

The completed Hut – Stunning!

Thank you Mr U for taking the time to photograph and send me these pictures. I hope my present was thanks enough for the inspiration you have given.

To see other customer experiences, build and ideas with our products, this page links several of them together: Pictorial Tuin Reviews

We also have a new version of this Shepherd Hut with doors in the side: Shepherd Hut Deluxe

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a little while now and haven’t quite had the time since my family and I bought and built one of the popular Shepherd Hut / Gypsy Wagon we supply. (Update – NEW Version with Doors in the side: Shepherd Hut Deluxe)

We’ve got a small field away from our home that as a family we all like to muck around in, it’s great fun for the kids and you can’t beat cooking sausages on an open fire. I’ve always had a hankering for a slightly different style of home office than is the norm. I work a great deal from home and I have always wanted somewhere different from my usual spot away from the daily bustle of family life.

The field makes for a perfect location but the trouble is I would never get planning permission for a log cabin on it as it is designated ‘agricultural use’. I need something totally portable and truly temporary, the Shepherd hut / Gypsy wagon fits the bill perfectly. I wouldn’t want to move it too far but with the aid of the tractor it will move and that’s good enough for me and is indeed a ‘temporary structure’.

We built this during Easter and still haven’t got around to making my perfect office from it. In fact it is still a bare shell but over the winter when work is a little quieter I intend to replace the glass with double glazing and insulate it. I’ll then make some fitted units; a desk, sofa, cupboards etc and with a wood burner installed it should be very cozy. Electricity will come from solar panels and battery storage back up. When I do get around to finishing it I’ll update this post but for now here’s some pictures and a short video at the end. I hope you find this useful if you are considering one of our Shepherd Huts / Shepherd Hut Deluxe

Shepherd hut chassis and base construction

Chassis and base construction takes the most amount of time in the build, the wheels and metal chassis are built first, then the timber frame and then the floor and veranda area. This part of the build took about three hours with my wife and two helpful children.

Be careful when you lay the floor as their is a start and a finish floor board. We made the mistake of not identifying it and had to cut the final board. It wasn’t a problem but annoying I hadn’t spotted it sooner ….. as I always say …. READ the plans …. doh!

The walls are all made of individual panels and are simply screwed together. It does help to have a couple of G clamps handy to clamp them together before you screw them. Also pilot the holes first. All the screws are Torx and you get a couple of spare bits but don’t drop them!

You'll notice my slabs supporting it are just laid directly on the ground, I didn't want to disturb the ground at all and with the adjustable feet it's not a problem getting it level.

You’ll notice my slabs supporting the Shepherd hut are just laid directly on the ground, I didn’t want to disturb the ground at all (planning) with the adjustable feet the chassis has though it’s not a problem getting the building level.

The roof is supported on pre-curved trusses. When you fit these don’t rely 100% on the measurements given as at my first attempt I wasn’t exactly in the middle of the roof board sections. I found it easier in the end to use the roof boards for each section as a template.

Each of the roof boards are individually nailed on. Like the floor there is a start and an end board, watch out for them and identify them first as they will catch you out. It is also a good idea to measure the boards across the arch to find exactly where to start it. We put the small section on fist and only tacked it to get this part right and exactly even both sides.

Once up the painting went on long into the night. When it is first built it is very white and we wanted to hide it amongst the trees quickly hence the camouflage green paint.

Finished Shepherd hut / Gypsy wagon. Yes the painting isn’t that great but we wanted to make the shepherd hut as unobtrusive from the road as possible. The window sections on the side can be put in either wall but only in the middle section of the building. As you can see we put both windows in the right hand wall as that will be the final position of my desk with a sofa on the opposite wall.

With a couple of friends to visit it really did look more like a gypsy wagon! Neighbours actually thought we had bought an original wagon, they thought it was an antique and the genuine article!

This is going to be an ongoing project for the family, hopefully we’ll have time over the winter to finish it off and update this post with the details. Here’s a quick video I took of it.

UPDATE

A year on and I still haven’t lined the inside as I wanted to, I’ll get there in the end and post here when I do.

BUT I now have sheep, I’m the very proud owner of eight Hebridean sheep who enjoy sleeping under the shepherd hut at night.

A little dream of mine come true … a shepherd hut complete with sheep!

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