No. 04 · Garden joinery
Bin store and log store
A matched pair of stores along a driveway wall: bins hidden, logs stacked and drying.
The job
- Discipline
- Garden joinery
- Where
- Surrey, UK
- Guide range
- £600 – £1,500 · bespoke side gate, hung and ironmongered
- Photographs
- 3 of the finished job
Materials
- Tanalised softwood
- EPDM flat roof
- Galvanised ironmongery
Front of house · Bin store · Log store · Flat roof
Or talk it through first. No obligation either way.
The brief
Hiding three wheelie bins in front of a house without building something that looks like three wheelie bins in a box.
Wheelie bins in full view of the front of the house, and firewood stacked under a tarpaulin that never stayed on.
What we did about it
Two structures reading as one run: a lidded bin store with a hinged top for kerbside access, and an open-fronted log store sized to a season of wood. Both sit clear of the render on a treated frame, with a shallow-fall flat roof so water runs away from the wall rather than down it.
Five decisions you cannot see in the photograph.
These are the parts nobody asks about at the quote stage and everybody notices ten years later.
Two structures, set out as one run
Board widths, heights and the roofline are shared across both, and the gap between them is the same as the gaps within them. Get that wrong and you have two sheds next to each other. Get it right and it reads as a single piece of joinery that happens to do two jobs.
The lid lifts so the bins do not
A bin store with front doors means opening two doors, wheeling a bin out over a threshold and doing it again in reverse in the dark. A hinged top means you lift a lid and pull. It is a slightly harder build — the lid has to be light enough to lift and stiff enough not to sag — and it is the difference between a store that gets used and one that gets left open.
Logs need air more than they need a roof
Firewood under a tarpaulin does not dry, it sweats. The log store is open at the front and stood off at the back, so air moves through the stack all summer. The roof is there to keep rain off the top of the pile, not to seal it in.
Standing clear of the render
Timber fixed hard against a rendered wall traps water at the joint, stains the render and rots from the back where nobody can see it. The frame here stands off, so both faces dry and the render behind is still the colour of the render either side.
The roof falls away from the house
An EPDM roof laid to a shallow fall running away from the wall puts the water on the driveway. Laid the other way, which is easier to build, it puts a season of rainwater down the render every time it rains.
The rest of the job, uncropped.
Shot on the day we finished, in the light that was there. Nothing has been staged, styled or straightened afterwards.
Open front, so the stack dries rather than sweats. 
Hinged lid, so bins come out without lifting them over anything.
Specification
What it is actually made of.
If you are holding two quotes for work like this, compare them here rather than on the total. The difference between a number and a much lower number is almost always in this list.
- Frame
- Tanalised softwood, stood clear of the wall
- Cladding
- Matched board across both structures
- Roof
- EPDM on ply, shallow fall away from the house
- Bin access
- Hinged lid, top-opening for kerbside collection
- Log store
- Open front, ventilated back, sized to a season
- Ironmongery
- Galvanised hinges and fixings throughout
Why it lasts
Tanalised timber, galvanised ironmongery, and every cut end treated before it went up. The parts that fail first on garden structures are end grain in contact with the ground and untreated saw cuts, and neither exists here.
Roughly what work like this runs to.
Not one of the sixteen Surrey competitors we profiled publishes a price. These are guide ranges for this kind of job, so you can decide whether to call before you call.
- Bespoke side gate, hung and ironmongered
- £600 – £1,500
- Bin store or log store
- £900 – £2,200
- Fencing, per metre installed
- £85 – £180
Indicative 2026 figures for Surrey, including materials and fitting. A guide, not a quote. Your quote is fixed, in writing, and comes after we have measured. All guide prices.
Asked most about garden joinery.
- What timber lasts longest outside?
- Oak and cedar, comfortably — both sit at durability Class 2 under BS EN 350, against Class 5 for untreated softwood sapwood. But tanalised softwood detailed properly and kept off the ground will outlast oak that has been badly detailed. How water gets off end grain matters more than the species.
- Why do gates drop?
- Almost always because the brace is running the wrong way, or the post is undersized. A brace has to run upward from the hinge side so it works in compression. Run the other way it is in tension, and timber joints are weak in tension — so it does nothing at all.
- Do you take the old fence away?
- Yes — old fencing and posts are taken away for correctly licensed disposal rather than left in a pile behind the shed. As the householder you have a legal duty of care over where your waste ends up, so it is always worth asking any trade how waste will be disposed of.
More on how this work is done, and what changes the price, on the garden joinery page.
Keep going
Tell us what you are trying to fit, and where it has to go.
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