Garden and Garden Shed

As we remodel we are trying to resurrect a vegetable garden.  In 2005  I dug up some soil where I thought it would be good for a garden and attempted to garden. I did get cucumbers, lettuce, green beans, peppers and onions, but never in abundant amounts because we were not here enough to keep up with weeding, watering and pest control.  Later,  it was told to us that the first owner was known by his family, friends and  neighbors for having a wonderful vegetable garden. In fact, two weeks ago a great nephew of the 1st owner stopped by as he saw from the back of the property that we had planted a vegetable garden right where his great uncle had. That made me feel happy that I was passing on a tradition of this property.  Now on with the Garden Shed!

Like I had said in the "Garage" portion of this blog, one of the goals was to build a garden shed so we could clean out the garage.  This was to be our first major project for the Summer of 2014.  I had no idea that building one could be so involved or that so many decisions had to be made.  Here are some of our considerations:

1- Decide on the size needed and where to put it.  We measured our riding mower and took an eye-ball inventory of all the stuff that we wanted in the shed to get a feel for it. We then paced off our placement options (behind the garage, out of sight from the back living room window, close proximity to vegetable garden, lined up with backyard driveway).

2- Decide on buying a pre-built shed or framing it ourselves.  Since my husband is a former contractor he knew how much work/time/money would go into building it ourselves so we decided to look at the metal sheds available in the nearby towns.

3- Shop around for sheds. We looked at most places that sold sheds and decided to get a metal shed. Wooden sheds have to be repainted a lot in our harsh climate ( I don't like scraping and painting.), plus there is a lot of termite issues.

4- Flooring?  All the sheds come with wood floors but we know  "wood touching soil = termite damage!" So we definitely wanted a concrete pad and if a hurricane tore up the metal shed we could stick frame another garden shed onto the concrete pad.

 Carl had to  visit the city to get foundation requirements, draw up the plans and submit to the city in order to get the $35 building permit.

  Marty dug beams.

Decision making over, shed ordered and partially paid for, now the work begins.



          Carl formed it up! 

                                 Marty filled it in, raked and tamped the soil.


We even got our neighbors Rose and Bruce to help us tie the steel and pour the concrete! When pouring the concrete, the driver didn't see our hand signals and poured too much cement.  What a mess!  We had to wheelbarrow lots of extra cement to make curbs for our back culverts and dumped extra in back driveway and watered it down.  We also learned to ask for smaller aggregates the next time we pour cement

As you can see, we added a ramp.  Carl put "Snake-Away" under the shed, tied it down with hurricane straps, and added flashing and  "Hardi-Siding" as a skirt between shed and concrete to keep out the critters.

 Carl added a little shelf for me to put gardening hand tools and soil amendments.  My neighbor, Rose, showed me a design for holding multiple tools nested together.  I made two of these of left over 2x4's and plywood for the leaf rakes and shovels. It is amazing how much this 10 x 12 shed holds!

Hooray, the garden shed is done!