A She-Shed of One’s Own

Deer Sullivan’s simple, colorful shed is a place for her to unplug from daily life—literally, since she’s ditched the shed’s electrical hookup. “I don’t need it here,” she shrugs.

Credit: Hornick/Rivlin

Just as the last century turned into this one, I found a tiny cottage in the classified ads. It was only $3,000, but it was also cash-and-carry. I called the number listed, and suffice it to say: Adventure ensued. So much adventure, in fact, that I wrote a book about that cottage-moving year, the title echoing the original headline: Cottage for Sale, Must Be Moved.

Deer Sullivan’s simple, colorful shed is a place for her to unplug from daily life—literally, since she’s ditched the shed’s electrical hookup. “I don’t need it here,” she shrugs.
Credit: Hornick/Rivlin

During one of my early conversations with Bob Hayden, a seasoned second-generation building-mover, he referred to my project as a “shed move.” I took offense. I’d already hired an engineer, met with a crane operator, applied for a building permit, appeared before the conservation commission, and cleared two hillsides. The pending 16-by-25-foot addition to my three-room home was most decidedly not a shed.

Get Our FREE Yankee Best New England Vacations Guide!

Email(Required)

Subscribe

In those days, sheds were stocked with shovels and spades, wheelbarrows and lawn mowers, bicycles and off-duty air conditioners. And some still are. But now there’s a revolution afoot. Across America, women are taking to their backyards to reclaim, repurpose, and create new rooms of their own. Introducing: the she-shed.

Search the term online, and you’ll fall through the looking glass into a land of tiny, tricked-out backyard buildings. You may want them all. You may also note that a lot of these lovely spaces are in places with not much, well, weather. And you may wonder: What does a New England she-shed look like? And perhaps you will embark on a different kind of domestic adventure, as I did, crisscrossing Cape Cod in search of real-life seaside she-sheds.

The Sitting Shed, Brewster

“I didn’t want my shed to become a project,” says Deer Sullivan, lowering herself into a faded blue beach chair. Deer has lived on this property overlooking Griffith’s Pond in Brewster for 13 years. The shed was here when she and her spouse bought the place; she needed only to clear it out and claim it.

Linda Colgan gives her green thumb free rein in her East Sandwich shed, which is flooded with natural light thanks to translucent polycarbonate panels incorporated into the roof.
Credit: Hornick/Rivlin

Casting aside the Pinterest boards filled with dream house she-sheds, I admire the simplicity of Deer’s 10-by-12-foot structure: minimalist seating, an overturned wooden crate for a table, a large gong (yes, she uses it) hanging by the oversize barn door, open wide to a woodsy view. The pale blue walls hint at the serenity Deer seeks in her shed, while the bold purple floor suggests this she- shedder is also a woman of action. “I am really a doer,” she tells me, confirming my color-borne inference. “And I am an artist, so I’m usually making something, or writing something, or reading something, or creating something with my hands. So I like to have a place where I can just sit.”

Deer takes sitting seriously, especially on Mondays—“mindfulness Mondays, I call them.” She is director of children and youth services at First Parish Brewster Unitarian Universalist Church, where, I’m thinking, mindfulness is pretty much a job requirement. In Deer’s case, this is work she takes home from the office. And she’s created a space that helps her connect to her personal spiritual practice.

Sipping fresh-brewed ice tea, she tells me that she’s always had a shed. “I’ve been lucky that way. Even when I rented places, they always had a shed, and I would turn it into a little sit spot. For me, it’s more necessary to have an outbuilding to hang at than to have a place to put tools.”

We watch three wild turkeys stroll past the shed. “That’s my neighbor’s property,” she says, motioning in the direction of the birds. When Deer is sitting in the shed, she can’t see her own yard or home. This outward orientation is intentional. “Sitting here,” she says, “I can’t see all that needs to be done. I can just be right here—in this little spot that could be anywhere—and breathe in, and breathe out.”

The Passion Shed East Sandwich

You have to get up early to join Linda Colgan in her shed. “I like to sit here in the morning, have a cup of coffee, and plan my day,” she says. And a good day for Linda includes some time in the dirt.

En route to Linda’s backyard refuge, I notice a small Eden on the roof of her house. Veggies and herbs, she tells me, fed by a gutter watering system. “I don’t have to worry about bunnies or groundhogs up there,” she explains. We pass a half-moon bed of rose bushes before we reach our destination: a 12-by-14-foot silver-shingled shed, graced with overflowing window boxes and filled with light.

The day before I visited, Linda hosted 80 guests as part of the Cape Cod Hydrangea Festival. “A lot of people noticed the shed,” she says, showing me the map she handed out to visitors. “One woman told me she had shed envy.” I get it. For me, it’s the perfectly level stone floor—a pattern of muted reds and grays, squares and rectangles. It’s a floor that could be in a Tuscan courtyard, and I want to take it home with me.

“This is the reason for the shed,” she says, directing my attention to a handsome potting bench. The surfaces are pine, bathed in a reddish stain; the supports are glossy green. The bench has a built-in soil tray with a screen. The cubbyholes in the attached hutch hold small pots and tiny treasures. “My son built this and gave it to me as a gift. When I laid eyes on it, I knew I couldn’t let it stay outdoors.”

I turn toward the door, where I see a small array of tools, some on hooks and some leaning against the wall. “My husband’s corner,” Linda says. “That’s as far as I let him in.” She smiles to let me know she’s joking. But this shed is clearly Linda’s space in form and function. Here, she feeds her passion—sifting soil at her handmade potting bench, poring over seed catalogs, sipping coffee, and deciding when it’s safe to move the tomatoes outdoors. So I have to ask: “Just one chair?”

“Yes.” Linda flashes me a conspiratorial grin. “That’s on purpose.”

The He-Built She-Shed Dennis Port

Shannon Goheen’s birthday greeting from her husband, Tom Huettner, was an illustrated promise. Happy She-Shed by the Seashore, it read, beneath a sketch of two sheds he planned to build for her. Shannon, a landscape designer who co-owns Second Nature Garden Works with her husband, says they had been talking about an outdoor structure for a while. “I wanted a space of my own,” says Shannon, pointing out that Tom already has a couple of sheds for “his stuff” on their 1-acre wooded property in Dennis Port.