Spanish Shed Ideas: Romantic Sketches for a Montecito Hillside

“Hey guys, I thought I would give you the backstory of this two-story Spanish shed that I designed back in 2013.  It’s actually on a two-page spread in my book. The renderings are larger than these.  These are “zoom ins”… but I wanted to talk about the thoughts, and what was going through my mind when I designed this shed.

Basically, you have to imagine a sloped section of land in Montecito… and I was working with the client, and we were coming up with different ideas- or he was asking me to come up with different idea ideas to charm up the property.  And, if you scroll all the way down and see the one-story shed, it’s actually the same shed… it’s just that from the driveway it looks like a one-story.

And I designed this little arched passageway so that it could be enjoyed from both sides of how you approach this shed.  But especially from the driveway, it kind of invites you in to like where is the front door of the shed? Well, it’s actually down at the lower level, down by the vegetable gardens and stuff.

So, this client had grown up in Spain, and he had expressed a desire to bring old Spain… you know, into this really nice piece of property that he bought in Montecito.  And so, over the course of many months, I came up with many different drawings for the main house, the pool cabana upgrades.  Lots of different ideas for a Spanish barn, and… I guess I better get back to the point here (chuckles). 

So, let’s start with the top image, the double doors- of course this is a garden shed. This is for a gardener to keep his tools. Also, there’s a big vegetable raised beds planned for the left side of this two-story building.  And it would just be a charming building that the owner and his wife and kids could spend time around this interesting structure.

None of it existed when I came up with a sketch. This is just a proposal for… you know, how to stair climb up to the driveway level, and bring in a lot of Spanish details. You know, the quatrefoil window with the iron grid, and arch top window with shutters… tile that goes up and around the double wood planked doors that have heavy iron hardware.  Of course, little site walls where you can have a watering can or, these terra-cotta pots that I put on the intervals of the wall.

Of course, I drew a lot of chickens in my 22 years of drawing these types of sketches, and so I put one on the top- kind a like as a roof ornament, there.  And, what else can I tell you about it? (PAUSE, chuckles)… I ended up being invited… this client actually bought me a flight to Spain, and I met him over there. He actually grew up in Spain and had bought this property in Montecito, but he wanted to show me around.

And so we, or I flew to London and I met him there… and then we flew into Barcelona and then hop skipped to some other areas, by plane- and just going to all these favorite haunts that he grew up in.  And so he was showing me different details that we would be ultimately designing more into his Montecito estate.

Sadly, for me… good for him, but he decided that he liked Spain better than Montecito, so he sold this property and moved him and his family back to Spain.  And, sadly… this shed was never built.  But I still have the fond memories of working with him- wonderful guy, very creative himself- and I just really enjoyed drawing these types of sketches for him. I lost count -a couple dozen, maybe three dozen different renderings of things that we were planning probably for over a year.

Anyway, I do have other Spanish sheds that did get built.  So I’ll share a link in that button… that red button that you can click on, and see some very high-end Spanish sheds that I’ve designed, that did get built.

Enjoy, and please come back often. I don’t know what I’m gonna be posting the next time, but it will be a surprise to you and I both—Jeff Doubet”