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I've been meaning to write this up for a little while, but the  kept derailing me. Now that things around the house are almost finished I have more time. Stand by for  Back at the start of this summer my wife started dropping hints that perhaps we wouldn't go away this summer, perhaps we'd spend the time and money on the house instead, perhaps that would involve the garden, and perhaps I could kiss goodbye to any loving spare time I thought I might have. We bought our current home around a year ago, it's an old stone cottage with a good sized but well hidden modern extension to the rear. Beyond the extension is a decent sized strip of garden that was plain grass, with a bark chipping patch presumably for the previous occupants small germ sacks to play on their swings, and a tired old decking.  Potato quality but you get the idea When we bought the house in summer '16 there was open farmland beyond our boundary but we knew planning had been agreed for new houses to be built, and wanted to renovate the garden to a) insulate us from the soon to be looming red brick monstrosity that was planned to be right at the end of the garden, b) replace the grass with a low maintenance area because I loving hate cutting the grass, and c) create a space for me to tinker with poo poo and chill out whilst allowing me to knock down the two rotting sheds on the patio area (sadly I have no garage here). We toyed with a few ideas for replacing the grass, including astroturf, but eventually settled on a planted garden that would be good to entertain friends and family (on the basis that they are plants that don't die every year and don't need much doing with, I don't know I'm not a gardener) The first task was removing the old decking in the garden, which was a joyful days work with a lump hammer and a wrecking bar. It was going swimmingly until I realised that stored underneath this decking was the rotting corpse of the previous decking. Suddenly I'm left with twice the waste timber I was expecting, and cussing at the previous owners half-job approach to poo poo.  The previous owner left the equivalent of a decking upper deck for me to find Fortunately the old boy across the road totally bailed me out and took almost all the bad timber off me, merrily chucking it in his furnace and saving me the cost of a 2nd skip. With the decking removed I set about cutting away the turf on the garden to see what we were dealing with. The soil was hard packed for about a foot below which was a thick layer of hard clay I had previously encountered when digging a hole to concrete in a washing line spike. The garden has a bit a wobbly slope running away from the house and my wife was keen to even this out, but the earth needed to be broken up first or it would be ball breaking to move. One of the perks of living in a rural village is that most people aren't dicks, always looking out for each other, and no matter what you need someone will have one and willingly offer a loan of a tool. My wifes over the fence nattering had yielded a petrol driven rotavator. The owner had warned me that it was a bit of an animal and whilst I found it hard going, my slightly less muscular wife had trouble holding the thing back. In the end she was so keen to do it that I opted to lash her to the rotavator and she laughed her rear end off as it towed her up and down the garden (Don't do this, it's a dumb idea, I am a dummy).  Throughout this whole ordeal my dog was a sulky dick, but she's my dick  Probably don't do this at home So now we're the proud owners of a well turned patch of mud, and I'm starting to see tasks stretching on way into the future. The first pangs of regret are beginning to surface, amplified by the accusatory stares I get from the dog as she realises there is no longer grass to roll on.  gently caress you It soon became clear that we would have to make some design decisions before we went much further and so armed with my wifes rough sketch of the garden design I used all my many years experience of the internet and high end design tools to produce this artists impression.  I had also been pondering what to do about the mancave/toolstore/chill space we wanted at the end of the garden. Initially I considered building something from scratch as I find the commonly available garden buildings here in the UK to be flimsy and I wanted something robust that would be there for decades to come, but with the work already looking like it would take us on into Autumn/Fall and doubting my joinery skills I opted to see what was available online. I was blown away by the garden offices/log cabins made available by https://www.tuin.co.uk/home.php and thoroughly recommend them to anyone in the UK looking for a similar job. With the garden shape starting to appear and the arrival date of the cabin set in stone I started work on the foundations. It needed to be off the ground, and the clay layer was close to the surface at that end of the garden which made for a very damp area. As with most construction projects in my adult life I took my plan to build a timber frame on thick timber posts to my Dad, who told me I was a loving retard and that the posts would be rotten through in 5 years. He did some thinking on this and in the end settled on 4 trenches across the shortest axis of the 6m by 4m cabin, filled with concrete as a suitable level foundation, with two courses of concrete blocks layed on top to bring the base to the right level for our use. I will say this is the first time I have ever laid blocks and between fiddling with the level, throwing compo into the mixer, and trying to get a batch done before it started to set I did lose my rag a few times. It turns out my wife is a much more patient bricklayer than I am.  Prepping the area, the cabin is a tight fit with not much margin for classic me to happen  Trenches dug and concrete poured  End result of be ragequitting bricklaying forever When we were happy with the concrete base I built a wooden frame out of thick joists - the outer frame doubled up and coach bolted together to provide me with a little margin of error when the cabin goes on it. I must have measured this thing a dozen times, I was still making GBS threads my pants when the first layer of the cabin went down.  Was nice to be working with wood again after weekends of dirt and concrete  Assembled frame before I slotted noggins in to stop the beams moving laterally The cabin arrived on schedule, a week after the groundworks were completed. It went up surprisingly quickly. I mentioned further up this post that I highly recommend Tuin for their garden structures and I'll elaborate now. They are beautifully engineered, 40mm 'logs' with double tongue and groove and a slotting process that results in a very sturdy stable structure.     All told it went up in two afternoons and the weather held long enough that week to get the roof on and cover it in the EPDM membrane. This is good poo poo, and provided you don't gently caress it up when you lay it it's good for thirty years. I like this because the idea of changing roofing felt every couple of years doesn't rest easily with me (see grass cutting). I came home the following day to find it being painted black and white, not what I had imagined, but I did sign over design authority to my wife and actually liked it as soon as I had overcome the initial shock.   Tuin provide more timber than is actually required, this worried me at first casting my mind back to failed meccano builds with spare parts left over before it violently self destructed, but soon realised this is intended to deal with any split roof boards etc. Between the salvaged good timbers from the garden decking and the leftovers from the cabin I had enough good workable timber to set myself up with a workbench, shelving and racking in the tool store bit of the cabin, a new garden table, and a sofa ramp for my old crippled half blind bullterrier.       With the end almost in sight, and a decent place to pour liquid morale down my throat at the end of each day work progressed quite quickly. We finished landscaping the garden to even the slope as best we could, laid the patio area in front of the cabin, and barrowed half a million tonnes of gravel across the road and down the side of the house because my pussy rear end delivery driver wouldn't risk dropping the tonne bags over the roof of my stumpy little cottage with his HIAB.    Three trees have been planted behind the cabin to provide an extra break now that the house there is complete. There's still a couple of bits and bobs to get done but on the whole I'm really pleased with it, and hanging up my toolbelt until next summer. Oh I forgot to mention, my dog continued to be a total dick until I replaced a small strip of turf down the edge of the garden for her to roll around on.  Human barricades garden badly, I poo poo where he works She's a jerk.
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Oct 20, 2017 21:17
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 08:19 |
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Good job! I am legit impressed!
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Oct 22, 2017 04:16
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That looks surprisingly well-made! How long does that spruce timber last outdoors?
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Oct 23, 2017 13:57
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fuckingtest posted:That looks surprisingly well-made! How long does that spruce timber last outdoors? I'm not actually sure, Spruce is pretty dense for a softwood and I've done everything I can to ensure it is protected from weathering and from ground moisture. If I can get thirty years before I have to start making structural repairs I'll be a happy man.
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Oct 24, 2017 16:10
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THE RAGGY posted:I'm not actually sure, Spruce is pretty dense for a softwood and I've done everything I can to ensure it is protected from weathering and from ground moisture. If I can get thirty years before I have to start making structural repairs I'll be a happy man. fun fact, something being a softwood or a hardwood has nothing to do with their density. Balsawood is a hardwood.
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Oct 28, 2017 09:49
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Looks good, hopefully you didn't level the slope too much because it needs to drain away from your house when it rains.
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Nov 2, 2017 23:01
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 08:19 |
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tangy yet delightful posted:Looks good, hopefully you didn't level the slope too much because it needs to drain away from your house when it rains. Yes, spot on. We discovered the clay layer and made sure the garden sloped well down from the garden, used the excess soil to raise the ground behind the cabin in case some good neighbour comes round and trys the rules lawyer the poo poo out of my building permission
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Nov 4, 2017 22:51
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