New Shed

My wife and I have been married a long time. Almost 43 great years although Val thinks only 11 were great and another 10 just ok. The other 20 or so she doesn’t like to bring up. But that is a story for a different day. The fact is that 43 years is a long time and a long time to accumulate stuff. Alot of stuff. And it seems when you get to this point you can go one of two ways. You can start a process of thoughtfully reviewing your stuff and beginning to purge stuff you no longer want or need so your children are not given the task of renting a dumpster after you are gone and feeling bad for chucking the boxes and boxes of photos and other stuff you just couldn’t bring yourself to part with. The second option is to buy an outbuilding to free up space in the house because that new grandbaby is going to require a lot of photographs. Our need to put every picture in a frame does not seem to help matters.

As any logical couple would, we chose the latter option. We picked out a shed and ordered it. When they deliver it for some reason there is a requirement that the spot for the new shed be level. Now my prior life experiences have in no way provided me with the expertise needed to make such an area happen. The guy I ordered the shed from suggested that it is easier for the guys delivering the shed to have a base of gravel about 4 inches deep that they can use to level the shed. I chose to do that. I mean how hard can that be?

Our yard is fenced in so they couldn’t deliver the gravel into the backyard, so they put it on the driveway. From there I wheelbarrowed it to the backyard. Oddly enough that wasn’t near as fun as it sounds. Val is still using her shoulder surgery as a crutch to get out of any heavy lifting, so I was left to do this all myself. The key was to not overload the wheelbarrow because when it got very heavy it was much harder to get going. I would remember this fact every other load. I eventually developed a pretty good system of crying, counting the scoops into the wheelbarrow and then eventually being able to make it all the way back to the area where the gravel was going before dumping the wheelbarrow over. After a short period of about 14 weeks I was able to get all the gravel moved and had a base for the shed.

In addition to making the base and since I had 4 tons of gravel on my driveway it seemed like this would be a good time to solve an issue my neighbor and I had. My neighbor has a chain-link fence. There is an area between our fences of about 2 feet that is just barely big enough for a push mower to get thru, but it’s always been a pain to mow so I thought since I had the rock I’d just go ahead and fill in the space. Luckily the wheelbarrow was able to just make it between the fences. Unfortunately for me that to make it between the two fences my hands would occasionally get caught in the chain-link fence and since I’m very old and the skin on my hands is like onion paper about very other trip down between the fences would require a trip to the hospital for a couple of pints of blood. On the third trip home from the hospital Val mentioned that I might wear gloves and that seemed to help a bunch. I eventually was able to finish and we have a lovely white and red gravel path between the fences now.

As I may have mentioned before, my backyard has a fence around it. The very first thing I did before ordering was having them come out to make sure they could get the building into the backyard. They told me they could. It required me to take a few sections of my current fence down. I called the company that put up my fence and arranged to have them come over and take it down and then put it back up after the new shed was delivered. I was pretty sure I could get the fence down but that there was no way I could get the fence back up or that the fence materials would still be in shape to even go back up. The came and took down the fence. Unfortunately, when the kid came (alone) to deliver the shed the first words out of his mouth was that there was no way he could get the building into the back yard. It seems the guy they sent over to see if there was room enough for delivery is about as good with numbers as I am. The kid said that more of my fence needed to come down as well as my neighbor’s chain-link fence. He mentioned that they can build on site so that was the route I decided to take. I called the building salesman and he set it up.

So, about a week later three Amish guys show up and in the time it took me to make a cup of coffee to drink as I watched them, they put up my shed. They arrived at 7:30 and were gone before 10:30. I can relate to that because 3 hours was close to what I used to work a day. I think they had a couple more buildings to put up that day though.

So, my shed is finished, and surprisingly even level. We’ve had it a few weeks now and it is full already. Mainly with tools from the garage that I have no Idea how to use and probably shouldn’t be allowed to own. Ah, the kids will have to decide what to do with them.