For many years now men have had their ‘Man Caves’ in which to have some alone time (often with 10 or so friends), philosophise about life (otherwise known as Monday morning quarterbacking) and generally cleanse their minds and bodies while enjoying beer, chips, and poker. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do not begrudge them a single second of this time. I think it’s crucial to the health and well-being of your relationship & for yourself to spend time away from your other half doing what you enjoy. But now there’s a way for the lady of the house to get some alone time instead- ladies, I give you the “She Shed”.
No longer will the shed be the cobwebby domain of elderly men smoking in secret – now the shed can become an island of calm in the ever-changing, sometimes stormy, ocean of family life. The She Shed can become the place you go to make yourself a drink, put your feet up, lean back & relax and Best Buy have used the ultimate in tech to create the ultimate She Shed for you. They took this:
And turned it into this:
I don’t know about you but I know which one I would prefer in our garden.
So what exactly did Best Buy do to turn this eyesore into the ultimate in tech-enhanced recreation for the lady of the house? For all of the details you can go to their She Shed project page where you can watch the full transformation and read about all the ways this She Shed earns truly the adjective ‘Ultimate’. In the meantime here are a few of my favourite features.
Extended Wi-Fi
With extended Wi-Fi you can open up your laptop and log onto Netflix and savour the opportunity to watch a movie without interruption or stream music from the house to your wireless speaker in your She Shed.  A strategically placed Wi-Fi range extender inside the home boosts the range of your existing router so the wireless can reach more places – a win for your She Shed and a bonus for the rest of the family who also gets the benefit of the extended range.
I know I would use this in the She Shed to enjoy our streaming TV. Even trying to watch a single episode of a program can be difficult with the constant background noise of a family of seven so the idea of an entire movie, interruption free – wow that would be out of this world!
Instant Sunlight – controlled by your ‘phone
Once you are settled in you might want to mute the lighting while you enjoy your movie and this is made easy with Philips hue. This new lighting has 16 million different colors, including presets like “Reading,” “Relax” and “Energize”all controllable with your phone and if by some miracle you have escaped during daylight hours and you don’t need the lights you can be sure you’ll always have sunshine with the hue lights sunlight preset. You can even set the hue lights to automatically switch to sunlight if it is raining outside – something that will get a lot of use around here!
To make it happen, Best Buy used IF. IF is an easy-to-use app for creating automated tasks (IF calls them “recipes”). They told IF, “if it starts raining, then change the color to sunlight.” The result? A little bit of sunshine to break through those rain clouds in their glorious She Shed
Other projects that made this a fabulous She Shed are:
- Turn ugly cables into art
- Grant access without a key
- Create a hidden refreshment station
- Set the mood with your lighting by phone.
So get on over to the She Shed project page and take a look at how you can turn that shabby disused shed at the end of the garden into the perfect spot to escape the family  enjoy a little relaxation.
The reviewer has been compensated in the form of a Best Buy Gift Card and/or received the product/service at a reduced price or for free
