Great ideas for outdoor rooms

Reinvent your yard with a new deck, patio, cottage, dining room, or curl-up space

19 favorite garden cottages and sheds

Creative ideas for backyard retreats, detached home offices, and reinvented sheds

Lisa Romerein

2 of 20

View all

Beautiful bath addition

An old garden shed a few steps away from her back door gave homeowner Kathryn Allen a solution to a pesky problem. “Our master bath had only a slender shower stall, and I was desperate for a bathtub,” she explains.

In a moment of inspiration, she saw Cinderella potential in the 9- by 11-foot backyard shed. Kathryn and her husband, David, cleaned and painted it, put in a new terra-cotta tile floor, added schoolhouse (awning-type) windows, and trained Boston ivy on the outside walls.

Take a look inside