Garden House Makeover!

Yes, I REALLY did this makeover in just two days!

I think if that you see the process and realize how absolutely possible it IS, then you can take on a spring project like this one, too!

In January of my last winter in Seattle (2012), it was COLD. Rainy. Gray. Depressing. I was ACHING for spring. And when I looked out into the backyard of the sweet little cottage that I was renting, there was a little garden house (potting shed, she shed, garden shed) that the talented owner - my friend Todd, who also owned a lovely boutique, had made from salvage. And it was full of junk. 

Some of the junk was his', and had been there for years. Some of the junk was mine, and had been dumped there the month before when I moved in.

The space was basically unusable.

But I just knew that with a good cleaning job, it could be a fabulously usable space - and a stylist's DREAM!

So I asked myself these questions:

* What junk that is thrown in there can be used in a new way for storage or decor?

* What junk/stuff that I have in storage or in the garage can be used in there? And let me tell you, I still had a LOT of stuff.

On Friday, the sun tried its hardest to shine through the clouds - and that gave me energy. I gathered up all the stuff I was going to use, and sat it outside the garden house. I was ready to begin the project on Saturday morning and DETERMINED to have it done by Sunday afternoon.

A lofty goal, especially considering that it looked like THIS inside on Friday:

Continue reading to see how it all came together in just TWO DAYS!
DWK
Saturday morning, I began by completely emptying out the garden house... which made it look a LITTLE bit less awful:

The old screen door that I had was hung on the INSIDE of the back doorway  - with the glass door swinging open to the right, outside of the garden house, this was the only way to make a screen door work there. And I had one, so I wanted to use it!

After that, I grabbed two partial gallon cans of white paint left from painting furniture, and watered them down to a 50/50 mix.

I used that to paint all of the window edges, door trim, doors, and the floor. There was about a half can of the whitewash left, so I added more water and used that thin mix to wash all of the walls and studs.

The old wood was SO dry that it literally sucked up all of the paint/whitewash!

I sat one small heater inside the garden house, just to be sure it would dry, and left the heater on overnight with the doors closed. [NOTE: This was a very safe contractor's heater on a sturdy base, not a household heater.]

On Sunday morning, I started moving in the furniture...

On the left side of the entry door:

One tall old crate that had been in the garden house and

two of my own large wood crates, stacked on their sides,

formed the supports for my enamel kitchen sink - that I had been hauling around for about ten years...

There was no running water, but the sink and its attached counters worked great for potting plants. Had I stayed there longer, I would have run the garden hose through the wall and into the sink, with a bucket beneath the sink to catch the runoff.

A pegrack made from old fence boards and ceramic pegs for electric fences was hung over the sink for storage.

An old aluminum light pendant was hung above it all, attached to a heavy-duty construction extension cord, that ran to an exterior plug on the house.

In the back corner, an old wooden chair 'rescued' from a dumpster and subsequently used for years in my store & seminar stage displays, holds my medium and large terra cotta plant pots in unusual ways:

There's a metal industrial bread pan on the floor holding pots, and there's a metal industrial muffin-top pan sitting across the arms of the chair holding pots. A few others sit on the chair seat under the muffin-top pan.

All of the tiniest pots sit up on a beam between the studs. I saw that idea at Christiansen's, one of my fave nurseries in the Skagit Valley, North of Seattle.

On the right side of the entry door:

There had been a long wood park bench inside the garden house (the owner's), and I placed it under the large window.

Over the window, I hung another one of the pegracks. It's not shown in the photo below, but I later hung a large white lace bedspread from those hooks to block out the VERY ugly view of the neighbor's yard. It still let the light in perfectly.

I sat an old enamel-top table (roadside find!) in front of the bench, and added one of my metal chairs to the other side. The other four matching metal chairs were at a patio table elsewhere in the backyard.

Above the table, a metal floral chandelier that I have had for YEARS was hung from the rafters - you've seen it painted black AND green in my past offices! 

The chandy's electrical cord had a plug, and was connected to another heavy-duty contractor's extension cord that ran down the fenceline to an exterior plug on the back of the house.

With all of the major pieces in place, here's the breakdown:

After I added in the faux flowers and gardening tools and other final details, here's how the finished interior looked on Sunday afternoon:

Everything that had already been inside the garden house was used. I added a LOT of my own stuff - furniture, lighting, decor & garden elements. But I did not spend one single cent on this project!

Here's what I did a day later, on Monday:

The garden house's exterior didn't really need much work - 

nothing more than a removal of some old hops vines that had grown up the side. 

The addition of a 'porch light' under the existing glass window 'awning' over the door made a big difference at night. The light was a plain metal work light from Home Depot that I had on hand, and the cord ran under the siding into the extension cord already inside.

I also hung two small metal 'shelves' from IKEA, one under each window, and loaded them up with some small terra cotta pots.

Around the side of the garden house, another one of my original ceramic knob peg racks was hung outside to hold large galvanized buckets and old garden tools. (My original use of ceramic electric fence knobs as pegs was later published in Farmhouse Style Magazine, in the fall of 2025 - find it here!).

And later that same day, I got busy shooting photos for the magazine I worked for and my own blog:

 I created this and more tablescape ideas that I have shared over the years here on the blog!

Then the next day, Tuesday, THIS happened:

Yup... it SNOWED! (Pretty, isn't it?)

I don't live in that little cottage in Seattle anymore, but I sure have fond memories of this project and the photo session. Thank you, Todd, for the freedom to give this makeover to your sweet little place!

So... what are YOU doing this coming weekend?

Maybe it's time to look at that garden shed or back porch in a new way... There's a LOT you can accomplish in just a few days, using what you already have!

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Funky Junk Interiors | New Upcycle Ideas #826 - 2026

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