Our New Shed is in the Yard... {Outdoors}

It's here... 

And we love it. I was even tempted to sleep in it. It's so beautiful and smells really good. 

Our brand new custom, locally made shed from BENSHEDS went up on Saturday, not Friday like originally planned due to the weather. Saturday was less than ideal too (overcast and cold) but not raining, and so the BENSHEDS crew of two arrived with their trailer around 10am. 

The handyman (+ help) prepared the ground, read all about that here, so our shed hires could get right to work with the foundation. 

Saturday was organized chaos to say the least, because the handyman arranged a crew of family and friends for Saturday to set up the kid's play area and decided to work alongside the shed build, which worked out well. I didn't want to get in the way so I popped open our sliding glass door and captured this. I think the neighbors were checking us out from their windows and doors too.. it was a happening place. 

The shed build was really quick. The trailer pulled out around 2:30pm. Totaling just 4.5 hours. Before they left, we got the okay to start loading up our new shed. We transferred our lawn/gardening supplies from our old shed, corralled the bikes in there, and kid's toys. We were pleased to see that there was plenty of room to spare. And this hasn't even been organized yet (ie. shelving, hooks, bins for toys). 

The storage capacity is pretty phenomenal. Already we're noticing our house is able to breathe more with many of these items out of the way (ie. my bike sat in the office for several weeks). Our mudroom is cleared of the kids bikes and scooter and they're no longer struggling to pull their bike out of a compact space. Our basement storage will be slightly roomier as well as we look forward to bringing up the snow tires and some camping equipment. 

But I'm also loving this.

The windows and flower boxes on the side of the shed. 

The windows let in so much light, and of course I'm excited to fill those flower boxes, hopefully inexpensively. We'll be putting metal inserts in those flower boxes to protect the pine over time as the metal inserts will contain the dirt and moisture. 

Our ugly composts are now hidden too. 

We don't want this to become an eyesore for our neighbors whose backyard meets up with ours, so we plan to keep it tidy and hope to stay away from using it as a dumping zone for unsightly stuff. 

Same with this area to the right of our shed. 

We added one item post shed build. If there was one criticism we had of this shed it's the locking hardware. The handyman went ahead and purchased a more secure hasp from Canadian Tire. We went with this Hillman safety hasp. 

 And for now, used our existing lock and key from the old shed. 

We're so glad we pulled the trigger on this one. This is our fifth summer in our home, and it will be our most organized I'm sure. The handyman is also looking forward to completing more projects in the home, with the help of the shed to store larger borrowed tools (rather than having to return them the same day).

Right now, we can't get enough of the view of our new green shed (yes, we love the Behr stain we went with) peeking out as we pull up the driveway/walk by/drive by. And now, we look forward to nature doing it's thing and having our yard green up, just like it's shed counterpart 

And because we love a great before and after:

Pretty great, right? 

I should let you know that we're not in any partnership with BENSHEDS, we just wanted to share our experience and maybe help out another homeowner along the way.