Riverside Garden Room
A timber built space, installed with a small wood burning stove for a garden room
Modern yet modest, this bespoke garden room built by Out of the Valley is the perfect quiet retreat to soak in the views of the Topsham estuary. The homeowners of the listed Georgian property in Topsham, Devon, wanted to embrace the location of their plot by expanding their home out into the garden. The garden room is set back from the house, acting as a completely separate space to escape from the busyness of everyday life, allowing them to take precious moments in their day to relax by the riverside.
Company owner of Out of the Valley and designer and builder of this beautiful timber garden room, Rupert McKelvie, explains to Grand Design Magazine, ‘the cabin was built as a place of sanctuary, to paint and entertain in, it was positioned to make the most of the estuary view, sited two meters away from the high tide mark’.
You enter this timber structure by stacking back the two bi-folding doors, revealing a cornerless structure to views which engulf the space. Due to its clever design and positioning, the garden room is both open to and sheltered from the elements, but serves as a safe place to watch the weather come in from the west.
Stepping inside, the wooden interior of the walls and ceiling makes the space feel calm and tranquil. The interior timber is left in its natural state, allowing the textures to complement the outdoors beautifully. Dark grey soaked oak kitchen cabinets contrast seamlessly with the woody colours of the space and are in tune with the darker shade of the wood burning stove.
The 14.5sqm timber garden room is built to be extremely energy-efficient, with a layer of insulation built up on the inside made from recycled plastic bottle tops, with another layer of wood fibre to maximise warmth. The heating is provided by a Hobbit Stove, sitting on a corner hearth built from Cornish granite. The perfect small wood burner for a garden room ~ 4.1kW nominal and only measuring 302mm wide, 355mm deep and 460mm high, it does not overpower this size of this space. Choosing to have The Hobbit Stove on its logstore stand raises it by 158mm, and adds space to store some fuel too.
The exterior of the garden room is clad with charred larch, giving it a rich, deep matt charcoal texture, with dark frames that blend with the cladding. Although designed as a dark structure situated in nature, its simplistic form gives it a calm aesthetic. This garden room is an ode to quiet, simple sophistication whilst considering the rural and natural surroundings. Explore more by Out of the Valley.
