Is It Worthwhile to DIY and Build a Shade House?

Author: Aaron Chen  Date Posted:3 February 2020 

Utilising a shade house is necessary especially when you have shade loving plants. It protects your plants from insects and environmental disturbances like extreme heat and strong wind. Apart from that, shade houses also help improve plants’ growth.

Some people prefer to build their own shade houses because it may be cheaper. However, as you plan ahead, this question may come into your mind: Is it worthwhile to DIY and build a shade house? To help answer this question, listed below are some benefits and drawbacks of building a shade house yourself.

Pros of DIY shade houses

  • Personalisation

One of the biggest advantages of building a DIY shade house is having the ability to get exactly what you want. Moreover, you can change your design easily without any hassles since you are in charge. If you wish, you can even go beyond your original plan.

Furthermore, purchasing a prefabricated shade house may be inconvenient since you cannot be sure if it will fit in your garden or nursery.

  • Space optimisation

With DIY shade houses, you can easily optimise production space. Since it is customisable, you can choose different sizes of nursery benches or multi layered shelves to make use of the space inside.

  • Materials to be used

When constructing DIY shade houses, you can choose where to buy its components. You can purchase from reliable vendors of shade houses to ensure its high quality.

  • Cost

In some ways, you can save money when you build a shade house yourself. You can buy your own materials that would suit your budget. You can also save on the rising expenses on labour.

With all the advantages that were mentioned, DIY shade house is not exempted from having disadvantages.

Cons of DIY shade houses

If you’re planning to construct your own shade house for your garden or nursery, you may also need to consider the following drawbacks before building it. 

  • No warranties

Warranties give assurance that the products you purchase are of good quality and do not have manufacturing defects. Shade houses kits from suppliers generally have warranties on it.

Unfortunately, warranty does't exist if you choose to construct your own shade houses . You may encounter problems and damages while building it. Thus, there is no assurance that you can have a sturdy shade house.

  • Impending damages

You may not know, but one reason why some garden hobbyists or nursery owners hire contractors for their shade house project is that they know that those people are experts.  Moreover, the experts know what the possibilities and problems you may encounter if you build it on your own.

Consider this scenario. You are about to build your shade house but you find out that some compoments you pruchased don't work well with others, so you need to buy new parts again, which  will waste your time, money and effort.

  • Quality may be overlooked

Since you are building a shade house from scratch, you may not be sure on which resources are good to be used. The quality of the components may be overlooked. Likewise, you might buy substandard materials. If you purchase all the components by yourself, you might not select the best kind of products.

Constructing a DIY shade house may not be a good idea. You can end up spending more money, time and effort. 

Before undertaking a shade house project on your own, you should assess your skills fairly. It might be an easy task at first. But, you should also consider if you have patience and resources to complete the project successfully.

Fortunately, there is an alternative solution if you want to custom-build your shade house even without any skills and expertise of buillding one.

An alternative solution

If you do not have the skills and knowledge to build a shade house on your own, you can ask assistance from an expert. Moreover, there are now DIY kits available in the market.

These DIY kits are half-built shade houses. This means that it has already different parts and components included such as frames, shade house cloth, doors and replacement parts. You only need to assemble it according to detailed instructions and guidelines provided.

DIY kits are not only customisable; you can also ensure that your shade house is built with quality materials.

In Summary

Constructing your own shade house from scratch may be difficult especially when you do not have the knowledge and expertise. With these, alternatives like DIY shade house kits can be taken into consideration.

So, for you, is it worthwhile to DIY and build a shade house? 


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