A man and his shed…

We have just taken receipt of a new shed at home. The old one had been there fore at least 20 years and although well built was suffering rot and borer damage. Also we wanted something that was more suitable to our growing of plants, so we went for a ‘potting’ shed, which includes a large glass window with a bench under it for starting seedlings earlier and for growing tender plants under glass.

First of all I had to take down the old shed and make sure there was a solid base underneath for the new one to be built upon (the delivery included assembly). It soon became clear why the old shed was still standing after such a long time as it took ages to pull it down, break it up and dispose of it (the concrete-asbestos roof had to be taken to a special dump to deal with).

The building had been built on concrete pillars straight on the ground so I needed to lay a base. It just so happened that we had a front path of plain slabs that we didn’t like so I took these up and cleaned the old concrete off them and laid a new path. Then with the old slabs and a couple of additional ones I laid the base for the new shed. Not something I had done before and apart from a couple of broken slabs and a slight dip at one corner, it was not too bad.

We had a couple of delays to the expected delivery date and had to rearrange work and holidays to accommodate them but eventually it came and the two guys had it up in less than an hour in the rain. We then spent another couple of hours filling it back up with the soaking wet stuff that had been sitting out on the deck for weeks. We will need to sort it out better, but for now it is undercover.