Preparing for our New Shed... {Outdoors}

...because this one has seen better days.

It's not us, it's completely you, shed. We're breaking up with you.

We have been dreaming of a bigger and better shed ever since we moved in. This one measures approximately 7 ft x7 ft with a door height of about put-a-kink-in-your-neck feet. The doors are loud and sticky, so I often have to give the door on the left a few swift kicks to get it open and get ready to catch whatever will fall. As you can see above, it's cramped, with the overflow collecting to the side of the shed, also in our tiny mudroom and basement storage. To put a cherry on top, this spring we opened the sticky doors to find inches of frozen ice locking everything into place. It leaked big time.

And did I ever mention that we don't own a garage?

How do we possibly do it?

It's actually not that bad. It inspires us to keep a small inventory of items. Which is always our goal: live simply. But again, we've been dreaming of something bigger, more organized, a shed we can stand up and walk around in... we're giddy just thinking about it.

At this point in our lives, our desire is not to have a space to park a vehicle. So the shed will be dedicated to outdoor supplies (ie. lawn mower, wheelbarrow, shovels, fertilizers etc), toys (ie. bikes, sand toys, skipping ropes), and some other miscellaneous items (ie. seasonal tires, camping equipment).

Something our current shed just can't handle.

Our new shed will go in the back right of our yard. Those wooden stakes show just how wide our new shed will stretch.

It was a tough decision whether or not we should build or go with a company that would build it for us. We decided that between the handyman's full time, physical work as an electrician and our young family, building a shed would be demanding on our limited time, and even somewhat beyond our ability (it would require a lot of research and thought). So, we decided to go with BENSHEDS, a company that makes their sheds locally and from full inch rough pine. Plus, they look great. We selected a high gable shed (bottom right lay out, to be exact).

We're excited about the double doors on the front (5' wide x 6'4" tall), two windows on the side that will face our yard, and flower boxes (my first flower boxes ever, and I'm looking forward to filling them). We're taking a bit of risk and going with a Behr stain called Sagebrush Green, rather than a typical cedar stain.

Even though BENSHEDS is taking on the construction of our shed, preparing the ground was our job. It took several days to:

• Remove a garden (including a large snowball bush and a tree that had grown intertwined with the fence)
• Take out a handful of privacy bushes (since they extend over 6 ft from the back fence)
• Relocate the black compost to the back fence (the shed will hide it)
• Remove 1 of 2 wooden composts
• Pull up the grass and rake/level the dirt
• Order and lay A Gravel (we ordered this through Fisher Hyde Park, London)
• And level some more... 

This is the closest I have to a before, since we were excited to get our hands dirty:

Our progress:

 And now, ready for a shed:

The plan is to have the shed up today (!); however, we're frowning at a somewhat daunting weather forecast and crossing our fingers that we'll be seeing a sagebrush green shed in our backyard by the weekend.


Any other outdoor plans this year? We're nervous about how this will all come together, so we're hoping the weather doesn't thwart our plans...