At the beginning of Summer, before the heat and the smoke and the ‘chitis, Mrs Widds and I decided we needed a little extra space for our treasures. We’re a pair of country gals at heart and have accumulated a country farmhouse, a large country farmhouse, worth of tools, equipment, stuff that we use seasonally, etc. This in itself isn’t a problem but we have a very little wooden shed and a very little two-bedroom cottage to store it all in. (the views here on Widder Lake are wonderful, but you can’t store stuff in a view)
A bench with a Widder Lake view
The solution to our dilemma was to get another shed.
Our local Lowes (hardware warehouse store) had sheds on sale, so we bought one.
It arrived like this …
Not quite what we had in mind
To be fair, we knew we’d have to put it up ourselves, but we were a couple of handy-dykes who had all the right tools for the job. How hard could it be?
The essentials – nuts, bolts, tea, a good book, a potplant …
After the tea was drunk, we got down to business.
Step 1 – study instruction manual carefully
That instruction manual was the most concise one I have ever read. I was shocked. Had to have a restorative cuppa tea to steady my nerves!
At last we were ready to take the shed pieces out of the box!
Mrs Widds knew which bit went where. I blinked, a lot
All good things start at the bottom …
If it’s all square from the beginning it’s square all the way up, theoretically
Then we huffed and puffed and figured out how to match the right panels, and connect the end-y bits to other end-y bits.
Corners!!! … If you look closely at the bottom right and left corners of this photo you’ll see several small tomato plants. This was the beginning of our summer veggie garden.
In a previous life I used to be an architectural drafter. The detail in the diagrams in the manual were the stuff dreams are made of.
The brass screws didn’t look half bad either
Walls!!!
We walked inside and gazed in awe at how much space there was. We could almost imagine it full of … stuff.
All the walls!!!
And that’s as far as we got before the Summer of the Year of WTF-uckery set its teeth into us.
But let us not dwell on the past for it is forgotten. (and if it ever comes back I shall blow it to smithereens!!! … but I’m not holding a grudge)
No cranky feelings here!
Some months later …
The gable ends. Check out the tomatoes. Grown a bit haven’t they?
Roof beams
It got a tad warm attaching the roof sheeting in 34° heat
We have roof!!!
All that remained was to install the doors and to move the entire structure back a meter into it’s final resting place … which surprisingly, wasn’t as awkward as moving the unopened box of shed bits when we began.
There! Isn’t she a thing of beauty?
So, in response to the question I posed in the title of this post – we did it. 🙂
Widdershins Worlds 
Time-lapse photography genius!
The funniest part for me though, was down here in Australia Lowes is a blokey clothing store.
Cheap overalls anyone?
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Yeah … It took me the longest time to wrap my head around going to Lowes for hardware and not clothes. I think it only really sunk in when we bought the shed-in-a-box! 😀
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Reblogged this on anita dawes and jaye marie.
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Now, that is a lovely shed…
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Thanks, we’re rather chuffed with it. 🙂
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Impressive! Now wait for the spiders to move in and it will feel just like home. 🙂
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Heh, heh, heh … they were lining up on the box before we even opened it! 😀
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I am full of awe.
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Thanks. 😀 … all ‘awe’s’ are welcome. 🙂
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🙂
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Nice! The restorative tea obviously did the trick. 🙂
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Heh, heh, heh … usually does. Imagine if I’d drunk the entire pot! We’d probably have a skyscraper! 😀
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That is awesome, well done you two! Very impressive (despite the long time frame ; ) )
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Very rewarding to finally close those doors, and know it was done! 🙂
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See, it didn’t take that long! Good job!
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Heh, heh, heh … if we added up the actual time we worked on it, it’d only come to, maybe, three days. 😀
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What a beautiful shed you have wrought. Though image 5 did concern me somewhat; the raw materials appeared to consist of a broken down pallet and a couple of bits of old scrap metal… 😀 It’s amazing what a good cuppa can make out of nowt! ❤
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Heh, heh, heh … that tea was magical! 😀
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Fabulous. And you did it by yourselves. Ha ha. Now start filling it up. Great view, by the way. Can’t beat that! 😀
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It’s our favourite bench. 😀
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those tomato plants look as if they’re trying to match that shed. Love manuals that actually guide you through the process.
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If we stretched the vines out they’d probably be half as tall again as the shed! 😀
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Congratulations!
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Thanks 🙂 … it was quite the adventure!
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Ha! We have Lowe’s everywhere here. She’s looks great
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Still new enough to be shiny. 😀
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Well done you! That’s impressive.\
I need a place to put stuff. My home runneth over.
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Thanks. 😀 … be warned though, just like that critter in ‘Fantastic Beasts’, whatever you put inside it will expand to fill all available space!. 🙂
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Haha, so true!
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Well done! Rather you than me.
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It was an experience, that’s for sure! 😀
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A lovely shed! Kudos!
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Thanks … we’re rather fond of her. 😀
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Awesome! This is what I call a magnificent feat. Will you give your storage friend a name?
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She’s considering her options. 😀
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Love all the photos!! I wouldn’t have been able to pull that off . . . kudos to you!
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Thanks … there times when we thought it’d never get finished. We got there in the end though. 😀
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They look great and go together easy…I love the way the hardware was arranged/packaged…sadly, 5yr later it’s junk…my biggest regret was not sitting the shed on a raised platform…
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Hi there … and welcome 😀 … we thought about that but didn’t have the wherewithal to build what we wanted, so we ended up building a shallow platform inside. 🙂
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It’ll work for quite awhile…also during heavy blowing rain it will leak a little bit…if I don’t forget I’ll send pics soon, of our 5yr shed…they are a awesome kit…well thought out
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