The perfect arrangement |

WEST SEATTLE — As many of our customers know, Modern-Sheds sometimes multiply.

Several of our customers have double sheds, from the yoga studio and home office in Alameda to the twin cabins in Blue Lake Springs. One family in Kirkland, Wash., even has four sheds on their property, all serving a unique need.

Husband and wife Fred and Susan are no strangers to the multiplying Modern-Shed, having purchased a shed for Fred’s sister, Jane, in Santa Cruz, and then buying one of their own to complement their West Seattle home.

Jane needed a Modern-Shed because she frequently had visitors over, but had no space where they could stay.

“Her house has just one bedroom (and) when we came to stay, she’d say, ‘You take my bed,’” her brother Fred says. “People usually end up sleeping on the couch. She has a big garden and Modern-Shed is a good enhancement. She can entertain people. She wanted to be more commodious.”

Fred and Susan built their own Modern-Shed bedroom suite in West Seattle, but the space is for them to enjoy, not their guests.

“We’d wanted a little separate ‘casita’ in the backyard for some time,” Fred says. “Our house in Spain has living quarters in one part of the house, an inner courtyard and a master bedroom across an open space. We enjoyed that lifestyle, that experience of saying goodbye to your house and moving to the bedroom as a separate part of the living arrangement. A Modern-Shed in the backyard was the perfect arrangement.”

The couple’s fully-permitted 12’ by 24’ Modern-Shed master suite features a bedroom space and a bathroom with a shower and toilet.

“There were a number of factors going into why we wanted a Modern-Shed,” Susan says. “The layout of our house and the property itself lent itself to make it easier to have a third bedroom and bathroom separated from the house.”

The couple travels quite a bit, spending their winters in Arizona, so they’ve only recently started to move into their Modern-Shed master.

For folks interested in building their own Modern-Shed bedroom, whether for guests or for themselves, Fred and Susan recommend meticulous planning.

“I think the No. 1 issue if you’re building with a bathroom is that it requires quite a bit more planning and it’s more complex than it might seem,” Susan says.

Their shed required a separate cement slab that needed more excavating to connect the utilities to the house, but Modern-Shed provided just the right amount of support, Fred says.

“We were not only pleased with Modern-Shed as a structure and from a design element, but our dealer Mike Probach was just incredibly helpful in giving us advice and steering us toward contractors and helping us with details. We feel indebted him.”