Our shed's had quite the history. We built this 4' x 8', half gable contraption from a kit purchased from Beaver Lumber more than 25 years ago. Before we were married even.
We built it out at the farm, because I was young and still held my father's carpentry skills in high regard. Here was a man who, when I was a boy, finished his own basement, built his own garage and poured several driveways and patios.
On the other hand, I had made a knife block out of 2x4's in Junior Achievement, which collapsed within months. Plus a wooden sign inscribed "DYCK" in wavy black letters, made in my high school shop class. Mom and Dad said the sign was too large to hang outside our front door, although my younger sister's identical sign (made the following year) held a place of honour in Regina and later at the farm for decades.
After a few hours of shed building however, I started to wonder if Dad was out of practice. Ignoring the instruction sheet, he insisted in building the shed in exactly the opposite order. Cuts within an inch and a half of the line seemed just fine to him. So long as we reinforced everything with Dad's favourite device, 3 inch spiral Ardox nails, he figured it would hold together.
Four hours into this two hour project, Cindy had enough, grabbed the instructions and insisted we start over. This time, by the book. Dad relented and followed Cin's directions and the shed was complete before nightfall. Then we loaded it in the back of Dad's truck and drove it to our the back of our rented apartment on Retallack Street.
(On the drive to Regina, Dad asked me why we bothered building the shed at the farm, because he was a "wood butcher." It turns out his friend Bob was the true carpenter. I forgot how Bob was involved with Dad's garage and basement projects.)
Because the shed fit between the wheel wells of an old half ton truck, we took it with us when we moved to Wascana Street. Cindy and the kids decorated it up and stored all the kid's toys in it for a few years.
When the kids got older, we moved the shed to the back of the yard and put our garden tools in it. Then planted two apple trees around it and pretty much ignored it.
The mice didn't ignore the shed though. Over the years we've been having a running battle over who gets to live in the shed. 20 year old particle board is pretty easy to gnaw through, I guess. It was time to either start using the shed again or get rid of it.
We're going to take side wall off and turn the shed into an open air wood storage bin for the micro-bakery. But first we needed to move it closer to the oven. On Sunday. In the +35C heat.
Robyn invited two of her friends over with vague promises of ice cream and along with Cindy and myself, we got to work. Robyn thought we only had to move the thing two feet, so more promises had to be made once she realized the true distance. But she hung in there.
I told the crew that we were going to move the shed just like the Egyptians built the Pyramids - with lots and lots of leverage. And for the most part, we did. We laid a series of boards end to end, then levered up a corner of the shed high enough to slide round bars between the shed and the boards. Then pushed like hell and tried to roll this rotten, crumbly monstrosity across the yard.
It pretty much worked. Much of the underside of the shed was rotting away, so instead of rolling, the round bars would fall into a rotting divot. But we were able to roll it 1-2 feet before stopping and resetting the apparatus.
20 or 25 roll and reset cycles and the shed was in its new home. The only casualties were a branch from one apple tree, a bit of the lawn where the boards gouged a path and about 20% of the undercarriage of the shed, which tore off on the journey. Not too bad.
Well, my wallet took a pretty big hit too. Ice cream is more expensive than I thought. Must be the PST.
And I had to promise that this is the shed's final resting place. Seems fair.