Here we go again!

My goodness, how time flies. Almost the end of August and I remember saying to someone at about this time last year, ‘You wait, before you know it, it’ll be Christmas’, and it was. And somehow I think it’ll be the same this year too. And it was about this time last year that I ordered in my first load of wood for my wood burner and had to turn my thoughts to building my new wood store to keep it in.

Now, strangely enough I’m doing almost the same thing all over again, but for slightly different reasons. Now that I’ve got hold of a decent ride on mower, I need a good weather-proof store to keep it in if I’m going to be able to maintain it in the same condition that it’s in at the moment. I’d already been having idle thoughts about building another store of some kind because with my cement mixer, wheelbarrow and rotavator (which fair enough, I expect to be getting rid of) plus sundry garden furniture when the weather gets really bad, there just isn’t enough room in the existing one for the amount of wood that I’d ideally like be storing in it. So now that I need one anyway for my new mower, that clinches it.

I’ve got the perfect spot earmarked for it, under the trees in the rear right-hand corner of my garden. It’s out of the way there and won’t be noticeable for me or my neighbours (not that it won’t be a thing of beauty…) and as the ground there is shaded and under the trees, I doubt that it’ll ever be much good for anything else anyway. And the piece of ground that’s available is also exactly the right size for what I have in mind, which is a shelter of about the same ground area as my wood store but with a slightly higher roofline to make it a bit more comfortable to spend time in, as it could also double up as a very nice little workshop if I design the interior properly. Here’s a quick sketch that I knocked up on my PC to show what I have in mind.

I’ll build it in a similar way to the wood store except this time it’ll need a back on it, of course. It’ll be mounted as before on a good concrete slab and I’ll also put a small concreted area topped with stone slabs in front of it so things can be stood there without just being on the grass where they might dig in. It should be a quicker build than the wood store partly because of what I learnt building that but also because there’s nothing there already that will have to be dismantled and cleared away and also because the ground is flatter and easier to prepare than before.

As I’m eager to get going, I drove over to Brico Depot this afternoon to pick up a bit more sand/ballast mix for concrete, another bag of cement to add to what I’ve already got and four good boards to use as shuttering for the base. So I’m all set and intend to get cracking ASAP while the weather forecast is pretty good. I’m rather looking forward to it, actually, and to be honest with the weight I’ve put on following my UK visit, I can really do with the exercise. And the next thing I must do is get on the phone and order up my first load of wood for this winter 😉