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
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