It’s big, it’s cumbersome, it’s housing arachnids with
bodies the size of cup cakes. But when it is time for your faithful shed to go
to the great wood chipper in the sky, what exactly do you do with a shed that
doesn’t want to die?
I inherited our shed from my mum who inherited it from her grandfather.
Having carefully housed three generations of Blamey garden ‘gubbins’, last week I looked out at our tired, saggy
roofed shed squatting at the bottom of our garden and decided that it was time
to euthanize our old friend.
For a start the roof felt had gone, the boards were rotting
and no matter how many litres of Country Brown fence paint I slapped on it in
every spring, by autumn the wood was peeking through. This combined with the
smell of wet dog and old tea bags that filled your nostrils every time you went
in no longer made it a garden haven but a place to avoid.
Having decided that the shed had fettered our view for long
enough, I looked around for a shiny new number on the internet. Which I quickly found. There she was – ‘Blooma’ - all sparkly and
nubile with shiny windows, the promise of 10-year rot free guarantee and – and!
– Someone will put her up for the bargain price of £30. Sold! To the lazy lady
in the corner who’d rather read Heat magazine and paint her toenails than faff
about for half a day putting up a shed.
But with beautiful Blooma arriving in the next five days I
faced the conundrum of what to do with the old shed.
A quick shove and a swear
Looking at its dilapidated form, I decided that all I needed
to do was set aside one balmy evening for operation ‘Shed Demolition’, give it
a decent shove, a good swear and the whole lot should come clattering down in
perfect Green Bin sized planks.
So armed with a hammer and a bottle of pinot grigio I set to
it. A bit of tugging, a large crack –
which drew one of our neighbours to his back door to give me one of his best ‘what
are you doing now looks’ – and half the roof came away. Thinking this will be done in time for Teen
Mom 2 and a nice cup of tea – I set about trying to break down the walls. However, after much shoving, some kicks,
several hammer blows and lots of stepping back to take large swigs of pinot and
size up my opponent, I realised that it wasn’t going to budge.
Like an opening scene from Holby City, I tipsily decided to
call in back up in the form of a sledge hammer and pick axe. But despite swinging both at the walls as
hard as I could the sledge hammer bounced off the wood and out of my hand,
whilst the pick axe just made neat two inch rodent sized entry holes in the
wood.
Realising it was much sturdier and tougher than I had ever imagined,
at this point I decided to what any sensible person would have done and began to
unscrew the walls from the remaining roof.
Finally confronted with a large shed jigsaw we - my long suffering partner, Matt, who has
witnessed all manner of my wine fuelled DIY demolition projects over the last
seven years – from blowing up the pampas grass with petrol, to sledge hammering
an asbestos lined chimney breast - had to decide what to do with our shed.
Too big to be tipped, too knackered to be sold we decided to
teach it a lesson and set it on fire.
For three nights shed carcass burnt on our vacant vegetable
patch.
I now know that you don’t mess with 25 year old sheds. They’re
stubborn, they’re angry and like Number Five they are much of the ‘no
disassemble!’ school of thought.
I have learnt my shed lesson, have you?
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| Just time to tweet this before I call the fire brigade.... |
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