Over the summer, I compiled a list of DIY projects around the house to work on in all my oodles of spare time. Included in this list was the renovation of four sheds. Yep, that’s right, four. Situated opposite the house, across the driveway, the four are all of a fairly similar low-pitched gable design and are clad in iron.

When we purchased the property, there were only three: 

• A two-bay garage in which we have never parked a car. It’s used as a storage shed for firewood, the garden trailer, the lawn mower, tools, building products, fishing lines, a surfboard, multiple boxes of assorted crap that won’t fit in the house and, most importantly, my beer fridge. It also contains a workbench where I attempt to fix everything the rest of the household breaks.
• A small garden shed used for storing assorted gardening paraphernalia.
• A somewhat larger garden shed used for storing bicycles, camping gear and assorted sporting and recreational equipment.

As you can see, the word ‘assorted’ is key to the functionality of this collection. Last winter, apparently dissatisfied with the range of assortment available to us in the three we already had, we decided to add a fourth. This particular iconographic shed was erected by my father some thirty odd years ago as a workspace for building a beach buggy. He made the buggy from scratch, bolting an old Ford Escort engine (taken from a car my brother crashed) to a chassis Dad welded together himself, attaching it to steering and drive assemblies he’d poached from other wrecked cars. My father passed away in 2014 and the buggy is long gone, but the shed remained at my mother’s house, slowly deteriorating on her front lawn, where it was used to store multiple boxes of assorted crap that wouldn’t fit in her house. My brother (of the aforementioned car crash) and I decided to move it out to my place, with the idea of giving it some sorely needed TLC and turning it into a home office/studio/music room/storage space for naughty children.

Erecting it at our house involved moving the existing small garden shed from the left side of the ‘sports’ shed to the right side so that my father’s shed could move into the vacated space. The floor of the garden shed was rotten and low enough to the ground that it flooded during Cyclone Gabrielle last year so in the process of moving it, I built a new, raised foundation and made an upcycled floor for it using palings from an old fence I had also pulled down to make room for the new addition. 

I also built a raised foundation for my father’s shed in preparation for the next cyclone, whenever that arrives. I must have had some idea of what I was doing, because sliding it off the trailer onto that foundation went surprisingly smoothly, especially given the adventure that was getting it on the trailer to transport it in the first place. It slotted perfectly into position, and once attached to the foundation, I began the renovation process.

‘Before’ photos of the fairly precarious yet ultimately successful setup used to load the shed on and off the trailer in the transportation process, and the interior upon arrival at our house.

I replaced some rotten framing, re-clad the front wall, repaired the doors and painted the entire exterior. We got an electrician in to run power to the shed and with a light and power outlet added, I’ve stuffed insulation in the walls and ceiling and lined them with MDF panels. My wife then painted the panels and I’ve trimmed them to hide the joins and screw lines with some upcycled timber from a trellis fence I pulled down out of the garden years ago. 

The initial stage of the project came to fruition over Easter weekend when we purchased a desk and I lugged my bass amp inside so that the shed could begin fulfilling both the ‘office’ and ‘music room’ requirements of its multi-purpose designation. As I compose this, I’m sitting at the new desk at seven o’clock on a somewhat brisk autumn morning with the first light of dawn glimmering on the horizon.

The interior as it currently stands, sans window.

It’s a perfectly useable space but the interior isn’t quite finished. There’s a cold draught flowing through a sizeable gap down the centre of the barn-style double doors, but a small electric oil heater is doing a fine job of keeping the room cosy and warm. I haven’t lined the back wall because I want to put in an aluminium window so we can get some airflow through but as yet, I haven’t managed to source a second-hand window that is both of a suitable size and glazed with clear glass. I’ve found several online with opaque glass which will no doubt have been removed from someone’s bathroom or toilet. In our multi-purpose shed, however, there’s no need to prevent prying eyes from disturbing one’s privacy. Quite the opposite: we want to use our prying eyes to scope out the view over the neighbours’ paddock, a paddock sewn with lush, undulating grass for their cattle and donkeys to munch on, overlooked by a range of bush-clad hills rising in the distance. It’s a typically idyllic rural Northland scene and one I’d very much like to appreciate from this desk I’m writing on.

Three-quarters of our shed collection, with their exterior paint jobs in various stages of completion.

So, until I find a suitable window I’m going to take a break from this project and move onto another of the million and one things on my DIY to-do list. I’ve started a YouTube channel featuring some of these projects. If you’re interested, you can take a look at the first of these videos below.

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