Tuesday 1 October 2013

Two Sheds

For most of the past month I've been undertaking a big DIY challenge: the renovation and reconstruction of two garden buildings. Not only did I wrestle with wet rot and win but I also got in touch with the spirit of my late father, a skilled carpenter.

The woman I bought my house from owned a local pet shop, in the corner of the garden was a wooden shed with a small aviary attached. Over the twelve years that followed I happily used these buildings as a storage and dumping ground for gardening tools and suchlike.

Earlier this Summer I generated a list of DIY tasks, one of which was sorting out these buildings. I thought I would just have to paint them with preservative, so I left it to the end of the Summer and got on with other things. Given the years of neglect, I suppose I shouldnt have been surprised to find that both of them were in a very poor state: some wall and floor panels had rotted and worst of all so had parts of the frames. I decided to try and save the shed but thought I would probably have to demolish the aviary.

I set about stripping out the rotten panels and wood from the shed. I treated the remainder with wet rot wood hardener and plugged the large holes in the frame with structural wood-filler. Worried that this repair wouldnt be robust enough, I added structural timbers to the inside of the frame and then replaced the rotten wall panels.

This was a lot of hard physical work. It was also very challenging mentally. Deciding how to renovate the structure, then getting the timbers, cutting them exactly and fixing them in place with heavy screws.

As I child I wanted to be different to my father. He was very good at DIY and gardening. In later life he became a successful carpenter. I often watched him working - but usually from afar.

When I reached a point in my DIY when I didnt know how to do something, I stopped and wished my Dad was still around so that I could ask him. But instead of being completely flummoxed, I found that somehow I did know what to do. The knowledge I needed seemed to be inside me and I was able to puzzle it out. All those years ago, despite my studied separation, I had been paying attention.

After fixing the shed, I set about stripping out the rotten wood from the aviary. All the floor had to go. The frame was in a poor state with wet rot in the one end and down one side.  Emboldened, I decided to try and rebuild it (rather than completing the demolition).

I went through the same process of renovation as with the shed, but this time with larger timbers, more sawing and fixing, more hard physical work. Then I put new wall panels on, made a door and lo and behold I had a second garden shed. After working at this project most days for the past two weeks, I finished painting it yesterday afternoon.

I'm pleased with the results and with my success at this DIY challenge. I feel sure my father would also have been proud of me.



"It is not enough to have a good shed. The main thing is to use it well." Rene Descartes

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