The Shack Is Finished! Our Garden Cabin Transformation

It is the final reveal of our Garden Buildings Direct BillyOH Winchester log cabin rescue. After weeks of warped timber, buckled roof, angry neighbours, and custom framing by a former movie set builder, our garden summerhouse and pod office is finally finished.

Come see the completed horizontal cladding, the rock-solid front frame, the repaired floorboards, and how we handled the wibbly-wobbly walls. 

Here's the full 360 tour or our new Garden workshop!

The Shack Is Finished! Our Garden Cabin Transformation



TRANSCRIPT: (CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE)

THIS IS THE TRANSCRIPT - CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE!

It's the next day of our log cabin build and you can probably see it in the background. Take a look at this. This is absolutely incredible. So, the front cladding is now on. I think where where we last saw it, some of the window frames have been done and the door frame, but look at this beautiful cladding. Uh, so we had the the felt, the rainroof felt put on as like a skin for the outside. What I love most though is look how scarfed in everything is. There's so much detail here that the the boards meet the the joists and the frames absolutely perfectly. This is how I wanted the log cabin to look and not like uh not like this from Garden Buildings Direct, the BillyOH Winchester cabin. If you haven't seen my earlier videos, I've got a playlist on screen now and down in the description. That's the the body of this log cabin. It didn't go very well. We had uh problems with the walls and the especially the fronts. The fronts just didn't meet the the roof. There was a big gap because it relied on these really small pieces next to the door frame. So, the door frame had no strength at all. And also in the heat. Oh, look. We've managed to get some felt around it. It hides the wibbly wobbly wall. I see if I've got some archive footage of quite how bad the uh the curvature of the walls is. I thought I'd give you a little uh sneak peek around the back. It's just as tidy. I had to leave enough decking so that I could put some weather proofing on. Um I probably left a bit too much room behind the the shack, but at least we can get to it. And I suppose I could I could use it for some storage as well. Maybe somewhere to put all of this useless wood, but it just looks so smart. Um I can't remember if these were on. We got barge boards on as well. Uh let's go in. So it's been watertight for a while. I guess we'll have to do something with the with the walls, but I'll wait for the doors and windows to go on. That will be next week. And yeah, you can see quite how bad the walls are. Look, can you see just how bad they are? Look at that. Oh, the window frame is straight obviously now. But that's what we had to contend with. The builder even put up an extra plank here, an extra log, partial log because it's just not straight at the top to the bottom. So that's now true. And that meant that the the roof had somewhere to go. But I don't know if you can see on the joist, I've got some Yeah. gaps in the walls. So, I'd like to seal those up once it's all done. And I've just seen a blooming. This is my wife's plant that's already it's growing into the into here. So, we'll have to uh eradicate that. I go around the back and pull that into that gap as well. Yeah. So, I'll seal that up. Let's go and get rid of that plant. So happy with how it's looking now. How can I get to that plant? I have to go the other side. So, this was where I was passing the uh the joist to my son and not communicating very well.

And uh yeah, so I'll have to deal with that as well. But at least the cabin hides it. I need to move these plants cuz I don't want it growing into the roof. Oh, it's up there. Look at that sneaky blighter. Maybe it's extra insulation. Put it on the top. Try and train it. But yeah, the plants uh really taken to it already. So, I don't think it'll be long before that plant is growing over the roof. It's the next day, the very next day, and I think this might even be the final day of this log cabin build. It's is behind me right now. I can't turn around cuz it's too good. It's too It's too nice. A look at it. It's done. It's finally done. I I knew we'd have this day eventually, but to see something that was so rickety and broken and not solid to now look like this is breathtaking. Let me show you some of the features of the final touches that have been put on to this beautiful log cabin, garden, office, pod, workshop thing. This thing is absolutely gorgeous. I've changed my shirt, by the way. Let's go in and I'll I'll try and point out as many things that I love about this as possible. So, this is the room. This is a bit like a Grand Designs reveal, isn't it? I've got some creaky floorboards because we haven't finished nailing the floorboards down, you know, that enraged the uh the rest of the street. It got up to 40° in here yesterday, which is kind of why I'm doing this in the morning now. But oh my goodness, look at what the builder did with the with the window framing. So, we got lovely proper framing around it. We've used the the furniture, the handles from the BillyOH Winchester, which I I think they're slightly twee. I don't quite like the brass look, but my son loves them, so we're going to stick with it. Um, you've got frame around the door, but the door frame, there was a wobble wobble on the BillyOH Winchester original front that we had. I was trying to explain this a few times where the gap between the window and the door was made up of little tiny versions of these. Actually, I can show you. The wall was built up using these blocks between the window and the door, which meant that firstly they didn't actually get up to the roof height. There was a huge gap about 5cm, 5 to 7cm. So, I tried putting them at a wonky angle just to kind of spread them out and bite into the roof, but it meant that the whole wall between the window and the door just wobbled and it just and it didn't connect to the roof. I think it's a problem that's unique to this width of cabin. So, if you get a 4.5m wide cabin, you're going to get these blocks and they're not good. They're really Whoa. doing Casper. They're they're not good. And this is why we've had to get quite a financially substantial build to to have a solid wall for the door and window to lock onto. But this is absolutely solid and insulated as well. So there's a there's it's a proper wall. With the original walls, I kind of like that we've got this wibbly wobbly design from the BillyOH Winchester where these these timbers have warped in the hottest July ever recorded. Uh you can see we've got this quite original design. It is kind of medieval. Uh which I kind of like. But look, I don't know if it comes across on camera, but it's not straight. This is straight and true. And the builder had has he's kind of carved into it. So the frame the the walls kind of eat into the frame which I... I like. I think it looks original. We've got it on the other side as well. Look at that. Oh my goodness. Look at that wave. So it's straight at the bottom, but where the original roof was nailed to the walls and it took the 38° heat. Uh you can see how much it warped and the distance between the the window frame and the wibbly wobbly wall which is straight at the bottom. So it kind of bows out which I guess gives us extra room in the in the shack. So that's good. I think we're calling it the shack um because I've got the happy hut. The huts at the end of the garden. It it got dubbed the happy Hut. That was the original building. That's where I make all my YouTube videos. We've also got some gaps where these have never met. And this was just where the the timbers were were twisted. And they were they were like that on arrival. When the roof was nailed on, the walls really twisted because it took heat at the front. the roof pinned it in place and the only way it could expand was to was to do its thing is to just twist and warp which is unfortunate because it means we've got these these gaps. So there is tongue still in the groove. I'm slightly worried about when it gets to winter apparently these cabins really do contract and the the logs fall even further into place. They're not nailed together. The instructions said don't nail them. I'm hoping that if they do fall that they'll they'll kind of lock in better as they fall into place. But I'm a bit worried because some people have shown these massive holes appearing in in their billio cabins. Do you know what? We managed to fix this. We managed to get someone to help us fix this. So, I'm kind of hoping that if anything bad does come up, then it's all fixable. We we'll manage to find a thing. We can't see the back of it. So if if there were holes on the walls there, maybe we could put some kind of cladding on the back just to keep it insulated and hole free. The first question anyone ever asks whenever whenever I show them the happy hut if they're male, the very first question, it's always the first question guaranteed is how do you get power to to the cabin? What have you done with the electricity? Um yesterday we had uh electrician in to connect the new hob, the new kitchen hob, our IKEA hob smashed. Um so we had an electrician in and I took him up the garden to to get a quote for this. And what we're thinking of doing getting two power outlets, having a socket in the leftand corner there and another socket in the right hand corner there. and he suggested putting some kind of junction box at the top so that we can fit lighting so that I won't have wires trailing up the wall which is fantastic and all of that wiring can take place at the back so I won't actually see it. It will just come into the hut. We'll have armored cable and that armored cable already runs from the the hut to the garage. I don't know if we should do some extra fancy lighting. I don't know if it's going to be too much if we got some kind of LED strip underneath the barge boards here. Um, it it would look cute, I think, for about 5 minutes and then I think it might get a bit annoying. But I don't know. That's that's what you think. Say say in the comments how you would light this. My son wanted he just wants fluorescent strips. He wants it to be like a working workshop. I... I... I think that would be a shame, but uh you know, to make it look like some kind of sweat shop factory, but I guess that's kind of what this is going to be used for. So, as I step on the the creaking floorboards, the the only touch of interior design we've added is the IKEA melon doormat and a Costco very industrial wipe your feet doormat because it does get uh muddy even on the few steps leading up to the the shack. The other thing I really absolutely love is the the lap board. I don't know what you'd call this. This kind of echoes and mirrors the the fencing boards that we had put in about a year and a half ago. I... I've made a video about that. Um that was our brother-in-law made that. It still looks absolutely gorgeous. We have that echoed. The builder saw that and said, "Well, I could use that kind of stuff for for the cladding." So, he's gone he's gone horizontal on here. All I can compare it to, and this is this is a compliment. It sounds like it's uh it's a this it looks like one of the shacks in Frontier Town at Chessington. It looks like something that you'd get in a theme park, which I really, really love.

And the detail that we've got, um where the boards meet the edges and where the edges meet the roof. Um, he sworded the the joists at the front to give them this diagonal angle so they don't jut out. I was more than happy to have juty out joists, but he he kind of finessed them so they'd blend into the barge boards on the roof here. Let me let the footage speak for itself now. I'll try and show it to you from every angle with some music just to show you as much detail as possible because on the wide shots, I don't think it does it justice. it... it just looks like how it should be. But so much thought has gone into uh every corner and every every part where the frame meets the wall. He's managed to scarf in really lovely detail and it's also so solid at the front. I can't tell you how wobbly and holy and insubstantial the front of this cabin was. And that is the side that's going to take the brunt of the weather. And it's also going to take the brunt of opening and closing the windows and the doors, every single entrance, the front of the shack just could not take uh when it was the BillyOH Winchester log cabin. I am very much calling this a dad delivers success. This has been a really difficult video to make because I didn't know that it was going to work out well. If you do hit the thumbs up button, it really helps me to keep these these videos going. And are you watching this video because you're thinking of a log cabin or a garden uh summer house or garden pod, garden office, workshop? Say hi in the comments. Tell me what you're thinking of doing and is this the kind of design that you're looking for. But as we move into the winter, I'll be making more videos like this. So, on screen now is the playlist for all of my cabin or I guess we're going to call it the shack, our log cabin videos.

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