As some of you may recall I have been doing a lot of home improvement over the last year or so. It started when we moved our fence and reduced our driveway a little to rearrange our garden layout, which then allowed us to move the shed, a new one from www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk and then create a new patio area where the old shed once stood, which still needs the slabs laying properly.

Our conservatory is finished and erected over the area of our old patio so we haven’t lost any space really and in fact gained some much needed sitting space in the sun as the afternoon gives way to evening. Before this shift around you’d have had to be sitting with the spiders in the shed with the door open to get the last few glimmers of sun.

The decking has had a clean and the mould and garden muck has been scrapped away, although I cannot for the life of me find the decking stain I was going to use on it to give it an extra couple of years life. I bought it, I know that much, but I have either left it at the hardware store or it’s been pinched or tossed away, although I find the last two accounts of where it would be a bit hard to believe as firstly our garden is now like Fort Knox and secondly you wouldn’t throw a brand new tub of stain away. The shed needs to be organised properly and you never know it might just turn up under the old tarpaulin behind the boxes, next to the lawn mower. A bigger shed seems to mean more junk, but that’s my fault not the sheds.

The sprinkler system is in.  The system consisting of one pop up rotating sprinkler which has a reach of up to twenty feet that happily soaks the conservatory windows, much to my wife’s annoyance, all the way to the pergola at the bottom of the garden, the boundary fences and the new patio (to be finished) where the old wooden shed used to be.  The bushes and shrubs around our garden are thriving from the twenty minute consistent watering they get on a daily basis now. Before we left it to the rain Gods to do most of the work, but I put the sprinkler in to the lawn to try and regenerate the scrub land that we had created from all of the construction materials we had left on it during the two or three months of building.

We decided to re-seed the lawn instead of re-turfing it due to the expense, but it is a slow process as we are doing it in sections to allow us and our highly active child to be able to use the lawn whilst we do it. So we have large areas of browned lawn that should have grass sprouting through it anytime now, before we move on to the next dead patch. Once this has been done the back garden will be nearing completion, which is a relief. It’s amazing how much hard work and time you need to put in, but it is worth it. Then next year we move on to the front garden and drive way and the veranda that clings to the front of our property, which needs stripping and staining.

And it all started by my wife saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if the shed was at the other end of the garden so we could actually sit in the sun in the evening?’ Thanks Sweetheart.      

My son had a birthday just the other day, he is now three.  He’s now at the perfect age to bring a playhouse in to his life and therefore a new garden building in to our outdoor living space. Since all of the work we have done on and around the house in the last couple of years is now close to completion we have found the perfect spot to erect the playhouse where his imagination can develop new worlds for him to explore and he can invent new games to play within it. It also has a slide which is over twice as long and twice as fast as his previous plastic based tower, which has been given to a friend’s child who will be able to use it for at least another couple of years, so we are saving the planet in our own little recycling way.

When the plastic tower was dismantled and lay in an unrecognisable mess on the floor the first thing my son did was walk all over it and laugh at how it wobbled under his feet. After three calls, in ever ascending tone and volume, from me for him to get off it, he finally did. I was amazed at how he took the news of the towers demise so well, although we had told him that he was getting a shed for himself (he likes visiting Daddy’s shed a lot although tools, nails and the like do not mix with three year olds ). His shed would be on legs and have a much better slide. So from just that short description he was sold on the idea of the ugly grey tower being extracted from our garden never to be seen again. It always amazes me what a three year old can understand. 

Without so much as being shown a picture of what my son’s shed (playhouse) would look like he was still very excited when the building arrived in our back garden. Although in pieces and without being told what it was he instantly said, ‘Is that my shed, Daddy?’ ‘Yes, mate. Daddy has to put it together first though.’ He smiled at me and then said, ‘Okay, put it together for me.’ There’s nothing like being told what to do to annoy you, even a three year old as cute as he is has his demands.  So for the next couple of nights after work I desperately tried and succeeded in getting it built and painted (preservative) for him for the weekend. Of course he was always saying, ‘Play with me?’ and I’d responded, ‘Daddy’s putting your playhouse together, darling.’ Our time together is precious to us both and working long hours can sometimes get in the way of the quality time (God I hate that sort of term) that we both desire from one another. But for the greater good I pressed on until completion.

By the weekend the playhouse was up and running and my son was up the ladder and down the slide ten or fifteen time in about two minutes flat and in and out of the door over and over again almost like he was testing it in some kind of European car testing facility, all that was missing were the crash test dummies and the black and yellow stickers.  The playhouse passed all of his tests and he hugged me, not because his Mummy told him to but because his world was that much more exciting and even bigger than before. He now has that place of his own to play and develop that was lacking in our home before. He has a new perspective on the garden, or is it the ocean or maybe the moon that he is looking out on to. Whether it is his castle, pirate ship or space rocket the playhouse has become in his mind for that particular time all I know is that I was sceptical that he would use it, but not now, I now understand the pleasure that a playhouse has given to my son and would give to any child.

Check out the range of playhouse available from www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk   

Follow Garden Buildings Direct on Twitter at: @GardenBuildings

Our mate @unclewilco runs a wonderful competition each year called the Shed of the Year on www.readersheds.co.uk. Anyone who has a shed for whatever purpose they deem fit can enter the extravaganza by posting their shed images and info on the www.readersheds.co.uk website and hopefully contribute to all the fun.

As a day job I photograph the products that www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk and our sister websites produce and sell. A lot of the time the garden buildings fall in to obvious categories such as wooden sheds, summerhouses, log cabins and playhouses, among others.  All terms that pretty much give rise to an all too common idea of what the innards of said garden buildings would look like when furnished, furbished and occupied.

However, @unclewilco and the readersheds massive brings your eyes to full focus, even if some of the images are a bit blurry, to the fact that not all sheds and summerhouse are for storing lawn mowers and escaping the, (uh-hum) summer sun in. There is a myriad of different uses and forms of decorative display that adorn these wonderful garden buildings and I’d just like to run some of them by you (with full permission from @unclewilco of course).

The pub shed is probably the best way of escaping your wife’s need to watch Coronation Square and Eastender Street fifteen times a week. You not only get to slink off and have a swift half or two, but you also get away with it because you haven’t actually gone out and left the missus on her own. (Please note that the roles are easily reversible and it could be the wife escaping the football, if you are looking for a second stereotype to complain about).   

There are those fanatics that love all things Doctor Who and Tardis sheds seem to be on the increase in numbers. Maybe they are all the same Tardis, but just at different times in the universes timeline, all converging here and now in so many back gardens. They do highlight the fact that the garden shed isn’t just a sterile building, although cleanliness is mainly pushed out the window in most sheds, but sometimes a fun and entertaining feature of the home.

A home cinema is something I’ve always wanted and a shed that fulfils this dream is just another one of the amazing things that some sheddies have been able to create with their out buildings.  What’s next, ice cream parlours, health spas, whatever it is I come back to the question that has been bugging ever since I started writing this entry (which wasn’t long ago) where do they keep all their lawn mowers, strimmers, deck chairs and wheel barrows?

Go and check out www.readersheds.co.uk and see what the nuttiest sheddies have done with their garden buildings and be inspired yourself to make much more of your garden shed than you may have thought of before.

www.gardenbuildings.co.uk

All images courtesy of @unclewilco and www.readersheds.co.uk

Mabel, Colden Common,Winchester,Hants Owned by: David Ashford

Our mate@unclewilco runs a wonderful competition each year called the Shed of the Year on www.readersheds.co.uk. Anyone who has a shed for whatever purpose they deem fit can enter the extravaganza by posting their shed images and info on the www.readersheds.co.uk website and hopefully contribute to all the fun.

As a day job I photograph the products that www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk and our sister websites produce and sell. A lot of the time the garden buildings fall in to obvious categories such as wooden sheds, summerhouses, log cabins and playhouses, among others.  All terms that pretty much give rise to an all too common idea of what the innards of said garden buildings would look like when furnished, furbished and occupied.

However, @unclewilco and the readersheds massive brings your eyes to full focus, even if some of the images are a bit blurry, to the fact that not all sheds and summerhouse are for storing lawn mowers and escaping the, (uh-hum) summer sun in. There is a myriad of different uses and forms of decorative display that adorn these wonderful garden buildings and I’d just like to run some of them by you (with full permission from @unclewilco of course).

The pub shed is probably the best way of escaping your wife’s need to watch Coronation Square and Eastender Street fifteen times a week. You not only get to slink off and have a swift half or two, but you also get away with it because you haven’t actually gone out and left the missus on her own. (Please note that the roles are easily reversible and it could be the wife escaping the football, if you are looking for a second stereotype to complain about).

Shark Shebeen, Shadoxhurst, Kent Owned by: Tony Warren  

There are those fanatics that love all things Doctor Who and Tardis sheds seem to be on the increase in numbers. Maybe they are all the same Tardis, but just at different times in the universes timeline, all converging here and now in so many back gardens. They do highlight the fact that the garden shed isn’t just a sterile building, although cleanliness is mainly pushed out the window in most sheds, but sometimes a fun and entertaining feature of the home.

BlueBox Type 40, Newport, South Wales Owned by: John Williams

A home cinema is something I’vealways wanted and a shed that fulfils this dream is just another one of the amazing things that some sheddies have been able to create with their out buildings.  What’s next, ice cream parlours, health spas, whatever it is I come back to the question that has been bugging ever since I started writing this entry (which wasn’t long ago) where do they keep all their lawn mowers, strimmers, deck chairs and wheel barrows?

reelwood, garden w.mids Owned by: pj   

Go and check out www.readersheds.co.uk and see what the nuttiest sheddies have done with their garden buildings and be inspired yourself to make much more of your garden shed than you may have thought of before.

www.gardenbuildings.co.uk

All images courtesy of @unclewilco and www.readersheds.co.uk

Some of you may have been following my attempts to make my garden a bit more user friendly. First off I moved my garden fence to expand our garden and reduce the amount of unused driveway we have. We only have one car and did have a driveway that could fit three cars, it made sense.

Then my gate blew off in the high winds a few weeks ago. The gate then swelled in the damp conditions and didn’t fit properly and my wife kept complaining about it being stuck and she couldn’t get her bike out.

I’ve finally put the post tops on and put on the anti swing through wood strip on the outside of the post, so hopefully the posts look finished and the gate won’t blow through any more.  I’ve also fitted a few cover strips to disguise the butchery job that I had to do to trim it down to fit once it had swelled.  These all still need painting though.

I’ve also been working on a sliding flap to close the hand hole that we needed to be able to reach the combination lock on the gate so it can be unlocked from both inside and outside, by those that know the magic number that is.

Next spring we intend to lawn the extra land we have acquired by moving the gate and fence and finally getting the new 8 x 6 shed and put it on the area of slabs that I have already laid. Once the shed is in place the old decrepit wooden shed will be removed and burnt or made in to shelves for the new shed and in it’s place a we will install a nice little raised seating and barbecue area next to the grape vine that has taken full hold of the pergola.

The snow has halted most garden activity and the lawn is now white and fluffy. The garden is really pretty in the coverings of winter and even the unfinished dirt space that has been left after all my hard(ish) work has a uniformed look with the rest of it.

If I had any sense I would have taken a lot of pictures this year as we made the transformation happen. Unfortunately I did not. So there is nothing to document that I-none-D.I.Y.-man has done all of this on my own with only my wife and son watching me muddle through the whole process.

For all new projects I must remember to take pictures.  Well, that’s next years plan.

For all of your garden building needs.

Reg Miller Shed of TheYear 2010 winner.  Image courtesy of Reader Sheds

My Twitter buddy @unclewilco the bearded shed lover from Wales has great fun every year in finding out who has the best shed in the UK.  By best shed I mean the building that is most loved by it's owner, most exciting to look at and most unusual in it's use. 

People of the shed world send in their details and pictures of their beloved shed and they are all judged by a panel of shedebrities (celebrities that love sheds).

@sarahbeeny has been a supporter of Shed of the Year and Shed Week since they started and is a judge once more for 2011's Shed of The Year, alongside BBC Radio 2 DJ, Simon Mayo and Gordon Thorburn or as @unclewilco calls him, '...the shedfather of modern shedism' who is the author of the 2002 shed bible 'Men and Sheds'.

If you want to enter the competition just fill in the online form here: http://www.readersheds.co.uk/shedme.cfm and if your shed is judged the Shed of the Year 2011 you could be just like Reg Miller, last years winner, with his The Lady Sarah Out of Worthing from Southend-on-Sea, Essex.

If you are looking for a new shed then visit: www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk for a huge range of garden buildings, sheds, workshops, playhouses, garden storage and log cabins.

My wife is scared of spiders, very scared of spiders, in fact. It doesn’t matter how small or how large the eight legged beasties are they will make her shudder, whimper and then call upon her wonderful husband to apprehend, incarcerate and then dispose of her tormentor. I don’t mind spiders because I hate flies. I really hate flies. But I also hate spider webs.

Our shed has seen better days. It has seen twenty years of better days and each one that passes brings it closer to crumbling in to a pile of saw dust. The spiders, however, love our garden shed, which in turn means that my wife hates going to our little wooden shed, which means that her wonderful husband is the only one to be able to go into the shed and retrieve whatever is required, quite possibly guarded by a spider or two.

With autumn gripping us at the moment the spiders have packed up their webs and moved to their winter vacation home or rather our home. For some reason the shed, which is now crammed with our garden furniture, is no place for a spider to spend the winter it seems.

How the little bugs get in, I have no idea. Somehow the arachnids have the combination to the lock on the shed door and have the strength to push open the cat flap and they all have reservations to stay under our sofa, behind the TV and around the light fittings for the next couple of months.

I’ve heard that conkers are an effective way of dissuading spiders from moving in. Placing them in the corner of the room somehow stops them from roaming about over the carpet. However the conkers rot and cause their own problems.

So do spiders like our shed? I have not a clue, but they seem to have a plan every year to come and make my wife’s life a misery for several months. New shed or old shed the results would probably be the same.

To find a shed your spiders might like visit: www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk

On Monday morning I am to travel to the north east of England to stay for a week in a tin can.  I’m not overly impressed with the standard of accommodation that I will be presented with, especially as there will be my wife, my two year old son and my Mother and Father-in-law rammed in to two bedrooms with the gales of the north east coast of England hammering the sides of the aluminium coffin.

How pessimistic, I hear you shout, especially all of you who live up there, but my recollections of the last two years are very vivid indeed, in my memory.  People, I am lead to believe, actually enjoy rattling around in these bean cans year after year.  I have stayed in two different caravans over the last two years, in different parts of the country for periods of five days and four very cold nights in both events and the staying in the caravan has so far been less than enjoyable.

Why don’t they replace the tired old ones with lovely log cabins? They are strong and as they are organic and not metal the havoc of the wind would be reduced.  There wouldn’t be any tink, tink, tink, of some annoying piece of metal incessantly rapping itself against the body of my tormentor.

The natural textures and colours of the wood and solid, robust structure would encapsulate the residents in interlocking security.  At no point would they feel like the holiday home would rock over in the wind.  At no point would the rain, pelting down, on the roof keep them awake and at no point would they feel like they were staying in a giant jack-in-the-box.

Why does this country have a fascination with caravans? Why can’t we have a fascination with beautiful log cabins?  Come on British holiday people who are trapped on our far from sunny shores, take a stand and demand log cabins!

I feel I may be going a bit over the top. I don’t want the caravan parks of good old Blighty turned in to a pit of revolutionary madness, but my wife did tell me of a place in Cromer that ritually burnt a caravan at the end of every season.  Quite cannibalistic, don’t you think? Unfortunately the funeral pyre was always swept away and a shiny new caravan was plumped down in replacement. Why couldn’t it be a log cabin?   

http://www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk/Log-Cabins 

August.  All I can think of at the moment is, August and how poor the weather has been so far.

Given the time of year I was expecting to be spending my weekends and evenings, during the week, having barbeques and sipping chilled wine in the sun and evening sun, but no, rain, more rain and the occasional thunderstorm and no barbeques.

We don’t have a conservatory at the moment, although my wife intends to slap one on the side of the house before we move, which will probably be a year after we have enough money to have such an extravagance. We have a hexagonal gazebo that is about twelve feet across, which fills a fair amount of room at the house end of our garden, serving as our conservatory.  It normally stays erected from June until September, giving us much needed shade from the British summer sun, of course I joke. 

I normally put it up on my own and it only takes half an hour or so.  It was a nice blue colour when we were given it and it has done really well over the last four years, although the blue has gone and been left by a shade of beige that puzzles me, blue to beige – how’d that happen?

I had noticed that that the wind had been driving it a bit hard just recently.  The gazebo rests on our patio and a couple of the legs are on the lawn giving that area a good cover from the elements and therefore the grass always starts to die underneath it.  The gazebo, because of it’s position, is tied to the fence and house and only a couple of the legs are staked into the ground and tethered down as the instructions would have us do, hence the concern about the wind.

The weather has been so bad over the last few weeks and the rain has tried it’s hardest to drag the whole structure down to the ground.  The pockets of water that fill on the top of the canopy have now been given a health and safety warning notice for the pet cat to adhere to, ‘Do Not Sit Under Here Moggy!’ She can’t read of course especially as she’s blind, but although the sign doesn’t really exist, it might have been a good idea for one day last week as one of the pockets of water was blown up and off the canopy top and landed, full force, down on the cat.  If you’ve ever seen a cat jump with fear and marvelled at how high these animals can spring from a laying position you would have been mightily impressed by my cat’s ability to do this feline trick.

I did laugh at the sight of our soaked cat, but then realised quickly that muddy paws and wet hair was about to ransack the lounge.  I didn’t laugh, however, when I got home last night to find the gazebo gone.  It had been raining hard and the cyclonic wind that whips around our house now that I have moved the fence has been lifting it quite high off the ground.  I’ve been lazy and hadn’t retied it or re-staked it into the ground and because of this I feared the worst.

Through my mind ran the scenarios of where the metal framed wonder had disappeared to.  Like a scene out of the Wizard of Oz I thought in horror that it had gone over the fence, maybe even down the road – a bit, and landed on someone wearing stripy socks (we have just seen Wicked in London so the imagery was still fresh) and following on from that a visit from the police and definitely a letter from someone’s solicitor who now had a white rod embedded in their arm, leg or head.              

My wife then had the audacity to say, ‘I wondered if you’d notice.’ She had taken it down, all on her own, with our two year old wrapped around her legs trying to stop her from doing anything that didn’t involve him. ‘I’ve just tossed it in the shed for now.  You can put it away properly later.’  Thanks.

So August has been miserable. I have once again failed to make the most of my summer in the garden.  The gazebo has probably seen it’s last summer outing and my wife’s need for a conservatory has been increased.  My cat is now scared of even more things she doesn’t understand and our new garden furniture that has been nicely covered by the aforementioned garden structure is now fully open to the elements. On the plus side I haven’t inadvertently killed the Wicked Witch of the East.  

Over the last couple of weeks I have been erecting a fence to extend my garden in to my over large driveway.  Before I had room for three cars and now I have room for two and because I only have one car, although an estate or station wagon as our American cousins might call it, this loss of driveway is not going to affect my parking space. My parking ability will still not improve, however.

This is my first fence erection. I am proud at the fact that I have begun to become my Dad.  By that I mean that he is a builder by trade.  He built his own house and can pretty much do anything, plastering, plumbing, building, carpentry you name it he can do it. Recently he put our new bathroom in.  It only took us a year and a half to save up for it and it took him three weeks to put it in.  Three weeks, you might exclaim, but he did a top notch job. He put real effort into it and for that my wife and I are extremely grateful.

This brings me back to my fence of which I am proud of saying ‘I am building myself.’  After three weeks the first four panels are still standing and the posts are all up right and true, which is amazing for me. It has taken me this long to get this far due to the weather, my Son’s birthday weekend, my anniversary trip away and a pulled tendon in my arm, oh and digging the post holes in the wrong place, hence the bad appendage.

By putting up this fence and turfing the once unused driveway our house will have more garden space for me to mow and my son to play in.  He is now two and his garden toy collection is getting bigger.  By bigger I mean climbing frames, slides and goal posts.  We have a poor lawn now, which will soon become much worse, a wasteland of dying foliage I predict.    
We intend to replace our twenty year old shed, which was falling apart back when we moved in, three years ago.  We are going to get a bigger one and utilise the new garden area for the purpose of repositioning this much needed improved garden storage building. Where the old one stood we are going to, according to my wife, use that space for a patio, seating and barbeque area, by we she means me. ‘You’ve built a fence, you can do anything, Honey’ my reply was ‘Hmmmm’ (spoken in a sarcastic under my breath kind of tone).

Okay, enough, my point is this; when you look at your garden you see the layout set in stone, or soil and flowers if you will. It may be hard work to change things around, my arm is testament to that, but the effort can be very rewarding, not only in accomplishing something for yourself, building a simple fence has made me feel better about myself although my arm is still complaining and I fear I may be over egging the blood part of the ‘blood sweat and tears’ saying at this point, but also you can gain much more from a little shift around.

By utilising wasted space in my our garden, driveway as it was, I can now make use of a larger shed, which no one will really see as it is hidden away by the side of my house and through the laws of perspective I will have a much larger garden and therefore feel like my modest semi-detached house has rather expansive grounds for such a dwelling.  We will acquire a new seating area, yes I gave in to the missus, and a whole new dimension to our outdoor living will open up.  

So next time you are struggling for space, your shed is starting to crumble under the weight of it’s possessions or you feel fenced in (see what I did there?) take a look at how you can move things around and see if repositioning your garden structures could make better use of your outdoor space.

www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk