Allotment HQ

A phone call the Thursday before last from my mothering law told me that one of her friends had a shed going spare, but it had to be gone by Sunday.

I got dad to meet me there on the Saturday with a trailer (I'd already taken it down) and we drove it up to the allotment. The shed is in great condition but it was quite heavy to carry across a very muddy field - I'm fairly sure my arms were 2 inches long by the time we'd taken the final load across.

This Saturday (with the help of my friend Terry) I managed to put up the shed at its new home down on the allotment. I've re-felted the roof but I've still got to board up the window and give it a lick of paint to make it look a bit nicer. It already feels like a nice base on the allotment - I'm looking forward to putting our little ball bearing lawn mower and car boot tools down there.

I'm really pleased with our freebie - Thanks to my mothering law!

Great week

This week has been great. I had a good couple of days plasterboarding with my brother, trying to get the little utility room ready to be skimmed. Then I worked for Dave on Wednesday in a little woodland in the middle of Ludlow. I grew up in Ludlow and I never knew that there was such a large wood and about 7 fields right near the middle, it was amazing! It was a hard days work but in the end we felled about 8 trees (having to use ropes to get them to fall the right way) and stacked the logs and the brash.

Thursday and Friday were spent (with my brother again) training and taking our trailer test. This is so we can tow a trailer on the road (if you took your driving test after 1997, a bit unfair that grandfather rights never seem to affect me!). We both passed but it was pretty nerve racking as its the same examination as if you did your HGV licence, lots of reversing around cones and trying not to drive with one hand around Gloucester.

My brother is starting a new job tomorrow, so that's going to feel pretty weird as I've been working with him so much over the past couple of months and he's going to be lodging away during the week. It sounds like a good experience for him as it combines tree work and building.

The weekend was lovely and warm so I did a little gardening, planting some broad beans (more than normal as I'll have more space when I get my allotment, the dibber in the picture I made myself at wood turning classes but I'll talk about that on another post) and pruning my apple trees and fruit bushes. I was quite pleased as I seem to have two new gooseberry bushes that rooted themselves from branches of my main bush, so they'll be moving to the new allotment soon!

I also finished the shed, as well as making and hanging the door to make it nice and secure. I'm determined to keep it clean and well organised, so I made a tool rack for my main gardening tools today, every tool now had a space and I'll make sure they go back there! I also plan to make some shelves and a cupboard to store all my nets, cleaners, chicken medicines, glue bands, string, saws, knives, fertilisers, etc.

Anyone else got any storage ideas?

Allotment news!

In the past couple of weeks since my last post I’ve been quite busy.Work wise I’m still working for mum and dad on the farm but I’m starting to look a bit more for other work (although I’m still not sure what I want to do!). I’ve been working with my little brother loads so that’s been really good and he even came round the weekend before last so we had a mess around in the garden trying to light a fire by friction. I think if it hadn’t got so dark so quickly then we would have succeeded but unfortunately we didn’t and we’ll have to try harder next time!

I’ve also started work on the baby shed for all my gardening tools, as the one we inherited when we moved here leaks like a sieve and is a complete mess. I’ve built the shed flat-pack-able so if we move house I can bring it along, but it weighs a stupid amount because I can never build anything small enough!

I managed to get it erected this weekend and most of the roof on so I’m feeling quite good about it, although I’ve run out of cedar and I’ve still haven’t got a door to put on it!

The exciting news is that I’ve been told I can have an allotment! Its about 5 miles away but it will mean I can grow loads more veg and I’m really looking forward to the social side of it. It’s not until April as at the moment it’s just a green field and this is a new site. I'm not sure what to grow but its time to have another look in the seed catalogues, I feel like a kid at christmas!

Heavy duty shelves

Well I’m not going to talk about the snow (I think everyone else has done that) but I did have some time on my hands yesterday so I though it was time I built some heavy duty shelves to house my power tools and other bits and pieces.

Lately I’ve been feeling very disorganised with my tools and I’m going against what I was taught when I was an apprentice:
“A place for everything and everything in its place”
It was important then as I could have been on five different sites in a week and loosing tools cost money and time. In five years of being a site carpenter I never lost a tool – now I’ve not lost any but I can’t find them either!

When I lived at the farm I used to have a small workshop with a set of shelves next to the door, this used to hold all my usual power tools and made them easy to load into the van. This is what I’ve made for my workshop to do the same type of job.

I started by working out the height of the shelves to make sure that the power tool boxes would fit and my tool box that contains my hand tools (which is very heavy) would fit underneath. I also wanted to make sure it could house some stacking boxes to put all my none carpentry items in (electric, plumbing and painting stuff but organised so I can find things).

I decided to build it almost to the door (about 1.1m) leaving enough room to hang a coat on the end. The height would be almost to the ceiling but with enough room to store boxes of nails and tubs of glue. Cutting the 4 timber posts to length I then marked out the ‘housing’ cuts. I used my mitre saw to trench these out, but you could easily do it with a saw, making lots of cuts and then removing the waste with a chisel. The housing joints mean that the shelves can take a lot more weight as they’re not reliant on mechanical fixings.The cross-rails then just have to be cut to length and knocked into the housing joints. I’ve decided not to any glue as the temperature is so low it won’t work very well and I might want to take them apart when its time to move on, so I just used 50mm screw. (The screws I used were self cutting but if you’re using cheaper screws you might have to drill a pilot hole first to stop the wood splitting)With two ‘H’ frame assembled I then needed to connect them up with more rails, I wanted the shelves to be 500mm deep so I took the depth of the two frames off that measurement and cut the rails to length. To make sure they held the frames nice and solidly I notched these rails around the post, they won’t be taking much weight so they’re just screwed into the posts.For the shelves I used some 9.5mm ply I had left over from cladding the inside walls of my shed. (The items I’m storing span the whole width of the shelf so the ply isn’t important, if it was smaller, heavier items I’d use thicker ply.) I notched this around the posts and fixed it down using 25mm screwsAlthough the shelves are very stable I still fixed them back to the wall before I filled them up.

10 seconds after I'd put them up the shelves were full. I think I might have to build some more!

Start as you mean to go on

Got the New Year off to a flying start (even if I did feel dodgy on new years day)!
My brother came round again yesterday to help me put all the timber work on the roof of my shed with the ceiling joists. It does feel massive – I’m sure it’s the biggest shed for miles around!
Then today I managed to persuade my dad to come and give me hand putting the ply on the roof. We also managed to get polythene on top, as a temporary cover, so it should be dry inside until I get the felt on to waterproof it properly.

The shed to end all sheds

I’ve had a patch of concrete down since the end of last winter, but with doing the house up and the garden I haven’t had time to start on my big project - the shed!

I’ve just had a weeks holiday (got to use it up before Christmas) and I’ve managed to get the wall panels made and on Friday we had the big erection (if you pardon the pun).
My brother came round and in a day we got all four sides up and fixed. It’s a monster! 4m by 6m – the neighbours don’t mind as its sitting where two very rough sheds were before. It should make a nice workshop to do some carpentry in, I’m going to make sure it is fully wired and I might even get the inside plastered (as it will be insulated and heated) so that it will be a selling point when we want to move on from here (a summer house or gym for someone).
Over the Christmas holidays I plan to get the roof on and windows in (weather permitting).

Claire does think I'm building a bungalow at the bottom of the garden though!