Whether you are the family do-it-yourselfer, the garage-less homeowner or the dedicated gardener, sheds can come in quite handy because, after all, they can hold a lot of stuff.

But the shedster whose needs start and stop at just a place to store garden tools and Junior's Big Wheel won't be looking for the same type of space as the one who needs workspace to, say, pot plants or tinker with "projects." Then there are those who seek a shed as a family hideaway -- as in hiding away from the family. Knowing what you are going to do with your garden shed helps you navigate a host of options in style, size, price points -- and questions. How big should the shed be? Should you build your own or, more importantly, can you build your own? Or, what kind of material should the shed be made of? How should the building fit into my landscape?

Advice from experts can go a long way to "shed" more light on the subject.

Al Eline, a Raleigh business owner who has been building and selling sheds and outbuildings for 20 years, says when it comes to describing the many garden sheds available today, the operative words are "diversity," "variety" and "hundreds." To help sort out the possibilities, he suggests looking at four ways one can build a garden shed: kit, prefab, custom built and do-it-yourself from scratch.

Kits

If all you want to do is keep your lawn mower and garden tools from getting rusty in the rain, a shed built from a kit is a viable option. For others, kits just make sense economically.

"If a homeowner has both the required tools and time, there is an obvious savings for them," says Eline, who was an integral part of the Shed Depot on Glenwood Avenue for 10 years, and now with his wife, Leslie, owns and operates All Build Shed (www.allbuildsheds.com) in Raleigh.

Even with such basic buildings, there is variety. These garden sheds can be sheathed in low-maintenance metal -- usually either galvanized steel or aluminum, dent-resistant vinyl, or wood, which offers a traditional look and feel. There are plenty of kits for making simple sheds, with a pitched roof and a door being the outstanding features, just as there are more elaborate models that include windows, skylights, dormers and gables. Green Acres wannabes can even find kits in barn shapes.

Price too dictates what you get. Black & Decker, for instance, offers a basic, heavy-duty vinyl, 98-inch wide by 29-inch deep garden shed that is perfect for garden tool storage and sells for about $350. Roomier 8-by-8-foot buildings can be had for as little as $600. On the upper end, for those wanting a lot of room -- as well as a project that will test building skills -- for $6,600, Handy Home Products (through Lowe's) has its 12-by-20-foot, all-timber Mackinaw model that looks like a Lincoln Logs creation on steroids.

The more elaborate the garden shed becomes, and the more amenities that are thrown in, Eline says, the more difficult it will be to put the building together. For handy do-it-yourselfers, this should amount to little more than an extra challenge not to have a few screws left over after the building is finished. For the homeowner looking to save money but finding their tool skills to be severely lacking, it can be a headache waiting to happen.

The comforting thing is help is a call away -- at least for kit buyers of one vendor Eline knows. "(The vendor) had stated to me that in excess of 80 percent of his kit buyers call him for support because they are not able to understand the directions. The calls became so numerous that he started offering his services after hours for a fee."

Next page >