I finally had a bit of time and inclination to complete the shed. I filled the hole in the front of the roof – with rusty steel slats that I found thrown away outside an exhibition hall. I have also removed the polycarbonate window that was on the side of the shed and replaced that with more rusty strips – to make it so that the whole shady side is clad in the same thing.
I’m quite happy with the final result – its quite odd looking and i will probably make a few more amendments – but it is at least waterproof now and has a lockable door.
I am going to start removing items soon though as i have heard that the autumn and early winter is a bad time for break-ins.

Looks like I have got hold of some large sheets of clear polycarbonate for the shed roof – instead of the patched up bits of plywood and chipboard that I put up there a while ago and never got round to waterproofing.
Will try my best to get them up in place over the weekend.

Done it  I screwed a few sheets up there – over lapping – so that I now have a clear and waterproof roof.

Made a good start on the man sized shed over the weekend.
Its laying on its front at the moment while i fix the panelling onto the back. then i’ll flip it up the right way.
I am a little worried that it may look quite tall because I have made the walls 2m high to suit my 6’3″ head in. but the pitched roof then takes it another 400mm higher. If it looks too high when lifted up I may change the roof to a simple gentle slope from front to back.

I have chosen to site it on a platform of paving slabs and have run these further forward so that the shed has a bit of a patio area.

Also planning to put a couple of polycarbonate windows in.

April 13th – Finished cladding the back wall of the shed – and lifted it upright. It was slightly wobbly – but I’ll add some more bracing at the weekend hopefully.

Once the sides and front are all clad properly it should feel a bit more stable too.

Had the afternoon off – so a short visit to the allotment was in order – I wanted to rake out the huge mound, at the rear of the plot, that I had dug over at the weekend – but it was hard going and the skies were trying to rain – and my son wasn’t quite in the mood today.

so I raked out some – but managed to break my 2 yr old rake (the top metal part just broke) as well as an old rake that I found 2 weeks ago under the old compost heap.

I resorted to shovelling out the soil towards the lowest areas – but it was getting hard work – so called it a day before I had finished.

The mini shed has been temporarily re-located into the middle of the plot while work take place at the back. For a small structure it sure is heavy to move around. I did enlist the help of my neighbour for that one.

Once the back are is flatter I can start thinking about building a shed there beside the cherry tree. As you can see I already have a pile of timber piling up – which needs to be used for the shed cladding or raised bed edging.

Allotment layout thoughts.

We have dug over the back area – approx 5m x 3m. This now needs raking out across the rear area so that a shed can be built alongside the cherry tree.

The plan shows a grassed area alongside the shed as well as half way along the plot.
I have drawn up the beds to be approx 1m x 2.1 each – allowing an 800mm path way along the centre.
Not yet worked out what is going into each bed – although there are already a few things in near the rear.

I’m also starting to plan how the shed will work – We don’t need anything huge – so I’m looking into the idea of a 1m deep x 2m wide shed that has 2 doors at the front. when we are working onsite – these 2 doors can be opened out creating a larger sheltered seating area under the overhanging roof.

Have also thoughts that I should add some trellis to the back of the compost bins – to hide them a bit.

Got some timber bits today that may go some way towards making a shed structure.

I saw on freegle (my local version of freecycle) that someone was having some work done on their garden and had taken lots of old fencing down. This was all being thrown in a skip unless anyone wanted it – so I went along this morning (luckily I had the day off of work) and there was quite a lot of fencing posts which were still fairly chunky and robust, lots of fairly good quality gravel boarding which should be fine to clad my future shed (if not – it will make excellent side panels for a compost heap), and lots of fairly crumbly old trellis.

I have used the one intact bit of the trellis in my own garden as we had recently bought a Honeysuckle that needed support – and I have taken lots of the gravel boarding down to the allotment for use at the weekend (today was really not an outdoors day).

I have also recently found a couple of old sash windows – that I will probably strip the paint off of. I think a homemade shed is fine – but the parts should all probably be the same material (not a white window with a green door in a new pine structure with old weatherboard). That’s the plan anyway.

I’d like to strip the paint off of any old bits that I find in skips. Also – I know the allotment society frown upon home-made sheds made out of old doors etc.

Mine will not just be made out of old doors – but it will be made out of old, found and donated parts as I cannot afford a new £300 shed from a DIY store – I do not want one of these either. I’d much rather make my own and enjoy learning something as I do it. Not sure my girlfriend would agree though.

The gardener that I met this morning (Pete the Pond his name was) told me he is always taking timber and paving slabs to the dump – so I gave him my number and am looking forward to a delivery of old paving slabs soon. I could probably do with another 30 or so slabs to replace the path that my neighbouring allotment holder has borrowed to re-create some sort of gravestone art installation.

So – get looking on freecycle if you need to stretch your budget for such things. Gumtree and Friday ad are 2 other places where free stuff can be found.

Home-made shed updates (including pictures) will follow soon – once we get some pleasant weekend weather.