The NOT She Shed

 Years ago, DH and I talked about building a shed near the garden to keep the tomato cages, stakes, hoes, tiller, and other garden-related tools in.  Like most everything requiring both time and money, it got put off, and put off again, and put off some more.  Three years ago, I picked the exact spot I wanted the shed erected in, and have made sure to not plant anything perennial in it.

In the summer of 2020, partly thanks to one window of DH's home office looking out over the garden, and partly thanks to him not working 60-70+ hours a week (covid's silver lining; it broke the cycle of DH having to be on site for meetings, tests, data analysis, etc, at all days and times no matter what our personal calendar might hold), and partly because DH remembered we had a big pile of salvaged lumber still, he decided that it was time to build the garden shed.

Oh hallelujah!

It went up over a series of weekends, and was weather tight by the time winter weather hit.

First, DH graded the site with the tractor bucket and back blade.  Then he erected the floor joists (salvaged wolmanized from somebody's torn-down deck) and put on the floor sheeting (wolmanized, bought new).   For a day or two it looked like we had a dance floor in the garden, LOL. 

Then the first wall went up, and our dance floor looked like a stage.  DD1, DD2 and I joked that we would host Shakespeare in the Garden performances.  Not being a huge fan of Shakespeare, or plays, DH got the other three walls made pretty quickly.  No Shakespeare in the Garden here.

 

Is it a stage with backdrop?

Using rough sawn pine from trees that he, our boys, his brother, and a couple friends cut down about 15 years prior at the family cabin property up north, DH framed the four walls, sheeting each wall (sheeting bought new) before he and I stood them one by one.  The north facing wall sports a large, non-opening, window that we'd picked up free somewhere over a decade ago and have been storing for 'just the right project'.  On the west side, he put in double sliding doors, as I requested when designing the shed.  When fully open, there is enough room to get a 5' wide whatever-you-want in and out of the shed.  Handy for the large and not extremely steerable dump cart I have, as well as the longer stakes and bean poles.

On another weekend, DH made roof trusses out of more of the rough sawn pine from up north, and we sheeted the roof with some OSB that we'd been given at least five years prior by someone just trying to clean up their overgrown and underused stash of building materials.  The shingles, which providentially (because they were another free 'here, take it, it's been sitting around forever') match the color of the shingles of our house, were put on in two afternoons, DH laying the starter course and me adding on from one side while he worked on the other.  It felt really good to be working on roofing together, as odd as that may sound.

As winter hit, he built my 'workbench', basically a counter at the exact height of my bent elbows when I'm standing up.  Perfect for working at, it's surface is at a height where I don't have to bend down even slightly and get a sore back (as I do in the kitchen and bathrooms if I want to work on something on those counters.  The curse of a being tallish woman, LOL).  He ripped some of those rough sawn 2x4s into 1-by and screwed them onto a frame he built.  The following spring I sealed it with a clear poly sealant, so that the wood will never turn gray (gray might be trendy, but I just prefer the new wood look over the aged wood look).

I found some free upper cabinets someone was getting rid of from a kitchen remodel and brought them home for use in the shed.

DH also built me two hose hangers for storing my hundreds of feet of garden hoses in the off season.  In the Fall of 2021, he finally added a shelf above the hose hangers for me to store the sprinklers and other hose attachments on when not in use.

At the same time as building that shelf, he built three shelves on the opposite wall.  Until we can get the greenhouse side of the shed built (plan is to add it to the south side of the shed, incorporating glass panels formerly from some sliding doorwalls that we were given literally decades ago and have been saving for that purpose), I plan to store my seed trays and supplies on a couple of those shelves.  I will probably also use one of the shelves to hold the extra plastic pots I saved for when I need to dig up and relocate (or give away) some perennials.

Stocked and ready for use.

This Fall (2022), we ran a water line out to the shed, and installed an outdoor frost free hydrant near the northwest corner of the shed.  I can't wait until next growing season when I won't need 125' of hose just to get water to the garden!  I'll actually be able to put a splitter on the hydrant and run two hoses, each with their own sprinkler, simultaneously when I want to water the garden!  I might not even need 400' of hose anymore in order to reach each and every corner of the garden.

At the same time as we had a trench dug for running the waterline from the well at the house out to the new hydrant in the garden, DH also installed an underground electric line.  That line is stubbed into the garden shed, but has yet to be poked through the basement wall and carried across the basement to the electric panel.  A winter project that he'll hopefully get to in the next couple of months (after deer hunting season is over), and by Spring I'll have lights and an outlet or two in my shed!

Why is this post titled The NOT She Shed?

Because when we first started building the shed, and DH told his friends, his mother, his sisters, that we'd been busy building my garden shed, they all said "Oh, so you got Kris a She Shed".  To which I vehemently replied "it's NOT a She Shed.  It's a proper, functional, farm outbuilding."  Not a trendy foo-foo backyard girlie hideaway.  Did you see any couches in the photos? Any gauzy anything artfully draped?  Any cutesy decor?

NO! You saw function, function, function.  This is not a place for lounging, and entertaining and drinking wine with girlfriends.

UGH.  I don't do girlie. And I don't do trendy. (And I don't lounge and drink wine with girlfriends.) 

I do functional.

I actually threatened to beat the ass of the next person who called it a She Shed. 

What can I say; call me a tomboy, and I'm cool with it.  Call me Amish, yeah, I can handle that (it's somewhat of a compliment).  Call me anything that sounds like you're lumping me in with the typical American woman, well, that's an insult.  If I've learned anything in my life, it's that I'm definitely not typical.