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To crane, stick frame or panelize? The backyard studio space has been growing as people find out they can build an additional small structure in their backyard to use for any number of things including mancaves, she-sheds, guest rooms, home offices, and art studios to name a few. Modern Shed started bringing this to light in the early 2000’s. The then owner and his wife, being architectural students, researched different ways to put an art studio/storage space in their backyard. They examined and compared stick frame construction to prefabricated buildings and came up with a better solution than both.

Stick frame construction means purchasing and having delivered raw materials which requires a significant amount of staging space and easy access to the building site. This was a significant problem where they lived, Seattle, but they quickly discovered there were many parts of the country that also (Bay Area, Los Angles, some East Coast Cities) suffered from the same limitations. Stick framing typically necessitates finding a designer or architect as well as finding time in busy contractors’ schedules. On top of that, they were left dealing with the noise and mess a contractor stick framed construction project makes.

On the other end of the spectrum there are fully prefabricated “sheds” that get delivered in one piece on a flatbed trailer or truck. Typically, these are simplistic in design, not very energy efficient, not very attractive, and they need to be craned into place. This normally entails craning the structure over their home because the access to the backyard, as in many places, was very limited. During their time researching and thought processing, they came up with a middle-ground idea.

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Having a prefabricated building, built off site, but have it broken down into panels so a few people could hand carry the already built “panels” into the backyard from the street and assemble it where desired. An idea most likely arriving from the likes of IKEA and hence, Modern Shed was born. Craning is dangerous, expensive and limits the size of the structure. Stick framing takes a lot of space for staging, creates noise and mess, and takes considerable time. Modern Shed’s panelization system allows prefab panels to be hand carried to the site, creates very little noise and mess during assembly and doesn’t limit the size too severely…a 300 square foot structure’s panels can still be hand carried from street/driveway to backyard.