A shed too far

As promised many moons ago I shall give you the story of the building work going on in my back garden.


About 10 years ago Captain Scarlet built this workshop, with a greenhouse attached for me to play in.

At the same time we laid a new patio. I say at the same time but in truth the patio took several months to lay because Capt S handmade every single slab. Yup, 1 to 2 slabs a day cast from a mould made by our next door neighbour. Sigh. They were handmade because he wanted to shape them to go round the edge of our very curvy pond and because I had curvy flower beds that needed edging.


I hand painted every single slab in an attempt to make them look like worn old bricks rather than new grey concrete. Yuh huh. To be fair the colour looks brighter in the photo than in reality.

The Cap'n had been toying with building a new workshop for himself ever since he took himself off to a bricklaying evening class and then got a little practice by building a 36ft x 6ft (in places) garden wall.

Oh by the way, I mixed and poured the concrete for the foundations which were nearly 3ft deep.

Over time the old workshop and greenhouse were rotting and falling to pieces while he hummed and hahed about building something. The incident with the greenhouse roof forced the issue somewhat, so we decided to demolish and build.

Coping with the disruption while it goes on is pretty much what has been keeping me away from the keyboard lately. Plus I'm the builder's mate - mix this, dig that. I've moved about 7 tonnes of bricks which were stored in someone's garden and infested with spiders. I was VERY brave I can tell you. The puzzling thing was that bricks have a recess on the top for the mortar - it's called a frog dont'cha know - and I would find snails inside the frogs where there was clearly not enough room for the the pesky varmints to get inside.

I've moved about 10 tons of sand and ballast from the front of the house to the back. I've made all the concrete for the footings and the floor. I've been busy!

I only have a small garden, maybe 40ft wide by 36ft long. The new building itself occupies nearly a quarter of that space, we have a pond in the middle of the garden so the non-planted area has been taken up by the spoil heap from the foundations plus the materials for the building. I barely have room to walk round some of the piles of stuff but I've been determined to preserve everything living.

It should have been been finished by now but unfortunately the wet weather we've had lately has put paid to all that. Here's where we're up to so far. The bit to left is my new greenhouse. And yes I stacked every one of those bricks onto little pallets from big pallets so we could get them round the back! I need a massage just thinking about it.