Welcome to Part II of the behind the scenes of my She Shed Project with The Home Depot, as I mentioned in Part I, while before and afters are fun I love seeing a project from start to finish. For me, my most favorite part of a construction project is when the drywall goes up! One of our friends its master at drywall and offered to lend a hand installing the drywall for us, of course I said yes, please and thank you. We purchased are drywall supplies from The Home Depot and used their online calculator

to help determine how much we needed. Quick tip for starting projects, make a list check it twice to confirm your buying everything needed to complete your project. I know it sounds simple enough, but there's been several times over the years where we've had to make several trips to the store buying items we forgot!

Here's a look at my new desk area, the Parsons Desk desk a classic and my favorite desk style pretty much ever, its from The Home Decorators Collection. I'm still getting my desk settled in accessories wise and, I will do a follow up detailed post about my desk supplies etc soon.

And just like that, the walls are up. Yes above is the same area my desk sits at! I just love looking out the window while I'm working its so relaxing. One thing I love about the cottage is the ceiling, I love how it vaults and then is flat at the center. It really makes this little space feel more 'cottage like' inside.

After the drywall was installed, next was time for mud and texture. I decided on imperfect smooth for the drywall finish. I loathe orange peel, and knock down [ yikes ]. We have imperfect smooth throughout the inside of our home and it made perfect sense to have the same texture in the cottage. Once the mud and texture was on the walls, it really opened up the space. I love how bright and large the inside of the cottage feels, this cottage feels so much larger than 10x12.

With all the pretty light streaming in though the windows, I was tempted to paint the interior walls white, but decided a soft grey was the way to go. I seriously have amazing friends, one of my sweet friends offered to come over and help me paint the inside of the cottage! After looking though several samples of paint, I choose paint the interior Sutton Place Grey by Glidden. I loved how the color looked on a large swatch I painted, but was a little skeptical while we were painting the cottage. The color was reading darker than I anticipated. Of course once the color dried, I was in love all over again. I used Glidden Duo in Satin finish and only had to apply one coat with little touch-ups since the primer was built in.

When planning the design on the inside of the cottage studio, I knew a corner window seat was a must. The

same friend who did the drywall offered to lend a hand building the built in bench. He and I worked on the design, so the style would be exactly how I envisioned. For the flooring Hasani and I installed

Vinyl Flooring Tiles

in Dark Walnut. I'm not 100% in love with the flooring, we had a few issues with the seams in a small area not wanting to stay put. But for the price, they're a great deal and overall look nice. Thank goodness for rugs!

Once the walls were were painted, and we installed the outlets and light fixture ourselves to save money on the electrical installation. Next, I called for the final electrical inspection. Happy dance time, we passed the inspection and the inspector gave our electrician glowing reviews. A quick reminder for all locals we went with

Sconce Electric

to install all the rough electrical. I would highly recommend them for both small and large jobs!

Next we installed the 5 inch baseboards, and trim for the windows. I opted to only do a window ledge since, I planned on installing roman shades with an outside mount.

As mentioned before, I envisioned working in our studio year round, so an AC unit was critical in making that happen! I worked with

The Home Depot

service provider

Beulter Air Conditioning & Plumbing

to install a mini split in the cottage. A mini split is a ductless Heating & Air Unit, the unit is compact and hangs on the wall and is super energy efficient.

Above is a picture of the exterior of our little cottage! To say I'm in love with this space is a huge understatement. Lots of hardwork and many long days and nights have went into transforming our TUFF Shed into a working cottage studio.

The cottage is far form being done! I'm looking forward to watching the the plants fill in the front, along with our grass growing back in [ California droughts are the worst ] Once the weather cools down, we plan on adding more plants to surround the cottage and help it feel intentional and blend into our yard. I picture little pergolas residing above the windows to up with shade during the Summer months, and honestly they're so darn cute.

Inside, I love how versatile

the cottage feels, I'm looking forward to getting more organized inside along with adding more special touches.

I'm working on a few more blogs posts, including one that shares a full tour of the cottage and all the sources used! Please bear with me though, I'll be away for two weeks visiting my bestie in England, and will blog more about the cottage upon my return! Yay, my trip abroad has finally arrived!

What do you think our my new cottage studio?

Follow Along My Home Depot Project The Cottage Studio

The Cottage Studio: Behind the Scenes Part I

The Cottage Studio Color Story

The Home Depot Apron Blog, She Shed Reveal

Have you seen, my finished She Shed Project with Home Depot on their Apron blog? I recently shared the completed version of transforming a TUFF SHED from top to bottom into my creative hub for all things Design and DIY. Once my sweet shed arrived, I couldn't help but rename it, the cottage studio it just felt to fitting. I love the idea of having a backyard cottage that's full of purpose and creativity.

While its always fun to a see a before and after, personally I also love to see how spaces progress from bare bones in my cottages case from just studs on the inside to a fully finished studio on the inside with electric and air conditioning.

Planning Process

When we started the planning process for the shed, when checked with the city with live to determine if their were any zoning restrictions on installing a 10x12 shed in our backyard. In the city we live in Northern California, they have strict guidelines for how tall, how many square feet and how close a building can be with property lines before requiring a building permit. Working closely with Tuff Shed we made sure to stay within those guidelines. We choose a

TR-700 Tuff Shed

and a nine light door, framed by two 24x36 windows in the front and two 36x36 windows on either side. I kept the back of the wall window free, since I envisioned bookcases filling the back wall.

Electrical Process

After the Tuff Shed was built [ read more about the process

here

] we had to get ready for electrical. We visited the building and planning department and obtained a permit to run electrical from our house to the shed. Getting the OK to dig to run electrical was super exciting! We had to dig a 20ft trench from the end of our patio where our meter and electrical panel reside to our cottage, the trench had to be 18 inches deep to pass code. Friends, digging a 18 inch trench doesn't sound that deep, unless you have hard-pan soil and rocks the size of dinosaur eggs once you dig deeper than a foot, not my idea of fun. We ended up renting a 18 inch deep trencher from The Home Depot and did a lot of hand digging. Below is an interior picture of the Tuff Shed prior to the electric being run inside. Since we planned on running electric inside, Tuff Shed installed house wrap for us, making sure our shed would be water tight.

My husband and I have experience in changing out light fixtures, updating switches with dimmers but no experience in running power to a building, moving around amps in a main breaker box and installing electrical in an entire building or a sub panel. For this job it made THE most sense in hiring the electrical rough portion of the job out. Rough electrical basically means electrical wiring before the drywall has been covered up, and passed inspection. After receiving many quotes and talking with multiple electricians, we hired

Sconce Electric

to do the work, Greg the owner of Sconce Electric is simply fantastic! He and I worked on the outlet placement making sure everything was done to code and discussed at length my plans for the shed. I would highly recommend them on both big and small jobs. I'm not getting paid or getting a kick-back for saying this, just passing along good contractors to others.

Inside we have two switches one for the interior light, one for the exterior light fixture, and six outlets that all work! We also had the electrician run electric for an AC unit (details coming in another post) and run a phone line out there.

The day after the electrical was installed, I had my rough electrical inspection and we passed! Passing our inspection meant we were ready for insulation and drywall! The inspector who checked everything out, praised the electricians work and liked that we also choose to install a sub-panel at the shed. This means we can turn off power at both the shed and from our main breaker box. To save a little money on this job, we opted to do the finished electric ourselves meaning once the drywall was hung, we would install the outlets and light fixtures ourselves. Another way we saved money on the electrical was taking the time to get the permit ourselves, vs paying for the electricians time to do it.

Since I knew I wanted a corner window seat inside my cottage, we placed these two windows on the corner. This is the previous view of the same space! It's amazing how different it looks.

Below is the sub panel installed by our electrician, basically its a mini version of our main breaker box. Quick side note, all the outlets inside our grounded and our outside outlet is a GCFI enclosed in a weather proof outlet box.

After the electrical was completed, Hasani and I spent an evening installing insulation on the walls and ceiling. To calculate how much insulation we would need to purchase, we used this

calculator

on The Home Depot website. This calculator also helped us determine our R - Factor. When installing insulation, its important to know which type of insulation is need for your walls and ceiling based on where you live.