Sarah and Guy Build A Shed

The beginning of the week is very dull, shedwise.  We’re really stuck until Derek the Dab can come and put up the plasterboard.  We decorate a fruit cake and take delivery of the pale green woodwash for the stud wall – nice colour!  We paint little samples of our ‘cookie dough’ and ‘ivory’ onto postcards and try them all together.  Lovely.  Paint sorted. On Wednesday Derek phones to say that he can start doing the boards and have I got them yet.  I haven’t.  He says that B&Q are doing boards for £4.95 so he’ll get them from there unless Travis Perkins (where I now proudly have a trade card) can do them cheaper.  I phone TP and, after a bit of haggling, I get them down to £4.94.  Well, every penny and all that… There is then what can only be described as a teensy breakdown in communications.  Having said to Derek that TP won’t be able to deliver and he’ll have to pick them up and I’ll let him know where, I presume that my text sa...

On Monday it rains and we do polystyrene.  We take out all the corner sections that we have already done, add battens to attach the plasterboard to, recut the polystyrene and then stuff it back in the wall.  We also put up a board in the storage area to take the pendant light that will eventually be in there.  Not bad for an evening’s work! On Tuesday it rains, Guy has a Woodlands Trust meeting and I play with the rockwool in the bits near where the stove is going to be, and do more polystyrene cutting.  I’d have got more done, only it takes me two hours to complete my 20 minute journey home from work because of the flooding… On Wednesday it rains and I get a haircut, so there’s no shed progress… On Thursday it rains and we finish the polystyrene cutting and clean up totally so that we can paint the concrete floor.  This means sweeping and hovering… so much DUST!  It’s coming up off the concrete, so we figure if we paint the floor the dust will stop....

After our efforts on the electrics, we’re looking forward to a much easier week with polystyrene insulation… Although it’s messy stuff, it is at least lightweight.  It is duly delivered (in 8’ x 4’ sheets) on Tuesday morning by a bloke who can’t get his lorry up the lane, so he and I carry it all to the front door.  Then I carry it all to the shed.  Not a good idea in a strong wind… On Tuesday night Guy arrives and we are ready to start.  We are clean, neat, tidy and ready in our overalls.  Yes, mine are a little paint spattered. We’re not quite so clean and tidy by the time we’ve finished – but you can have a damned fine snowstorm with the stuff!  Blunkett is now banished from the cabin as she gets bits stuck to her wet nose and looks like a dalmation… On Wednesday we order trestles and planks from the local hire shop so that we can reach the roof safely – in the evening we do the back room ceiling… And on Thursday night we do the f...

I celebrate the dawn of a whole new year by… getting ill.  I had presumed I was just knackered from a Damned Fine New Year Celebration, but by Thursday it is clear to anyone in the office that I’m a very odd grey colour and Not Entirely Myself.  I am despatched home, where I spend a sweaty afternoon in bed and feel a bit better for it.  I know, yeugh.  Anyway, by Saturday we decide we can tackle the ‘first fix electrics’ as that’s just a gentle job of pushing a few bits of cable through a few bits of wood where they’re meant to be.  And we have an ‘electric plan’.  This doesn’t mean that it lights up, or whirrs or anything, just that we have a plan of the electrics.   We have decided that in my enfeebled state it would be best if I direct and Guy does the work, so I point and Guy drills.  Or, rather, I point and the drill makes all the right noises but absolutely no impression on the wood.  We drill a pilot hole instead…. Then use a diff...

Happy New Year! Being true shed persons, we did what we ought to do at midnight - we celebrated in the shed, of course! Yes, it was a bit cold.  Yes, we were wearing coats and woolly hats. Damned fine party though!! Happy New Year, everyone!