Getting Some Site Storage  -  May 2009

Since we first took possession of our little piece of land, we have started collecting various tools and equipment, and I think  it's time to get some sort of storage sorted out. Since we moved the caravan on site we decided to make some extra space by purchasing a decent size awning, which we have been using to also store some of our stuff including our new ride-on mower, but time for some sort of shed we think. We took a shopping trip to a few of the larger brico stores, and we finally decided on a metal shed about 8' by 6'.

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The next morning we opened the packaging and had a look at the instructions (which were extensive), there were a lot of components, so I started by laying everything out on the ground, according to the instructions it should take 2 people 1 day to complete!, Jill was available if I needed her, but I thought I should do this one on my own for now, cause at some point I knew I would be throwing my toys out the pram!.

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Putting one of these things together was a nightmare, it probably didn't help that I was building it straight onto the ground (No base), not ideal, but as yet we hadn't purchased a Cement  Mixer, so we just had to make do. After spending all day wrestling with metal and a thousand little screws, it was finally together, Jill had just popped up the road to have a chat with one of our French neighbours, so I had to get the roof on my myself (Yes I could have waited for Jill to come back, but I'm a tad impatient, and I wanted to get the job done), I finally got the damned thing on, and it looked great, just what we needed, the only thing I hadn't done was actually fix the roof to the main body of the shed, I just couldn't face more of those little screws, I was mentally drained, and I was loosing the daylight, so I thought I would just make that my first job in the morning.

Well, that night we had a hell of a storm, just before we went to bed I decided to just check the awning, good job I did as there was a huge dip in the middle where it had just filled up with water, so I got the broom and pushed it off, however the awning ceiling was now deformed and made a perfect catchment for the heavy rain, and it filled up with water again very quickly, so I ended up spending the entire night sitting in a deckchair out in the awning pushing the water off every few minutes!

Finally about 06.30 the rain stopped, so I went back inside the caravan to get a some sleep, about 15 minutes later there was a huge gust of wind followed by a thud, Jill went outside to see that the noise was, then came in to get me rather quickly. It turned out that huge gust of wind had lifted the roof right off the shed and sent it into next doors garden, luckily there was no damage whatsoever, how I don't know!, so Jill and our neighbour's mum balanced the roof on the fence while I ran round the other side and took it from them, then waited for Jill to come back round to give me a hand, we put the roof back onto the shed and this time although I was knackered I put the remaining screws in, and then to be on the safe side I had some fence posts left over, so I hammered them into the ground as far as I could, one in each corner, then tied the shed to them, no storm was gonna mess with my shed again!  :-) 

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And oh yeah, did I get any sleep that day, no, did I hell :-)

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Job No 6 Done.