We've not had a shed before, so that's quite exciting. The garage at the old house was mahoosive so most of the gardening stuff went in that: plenty of space, & alarmed too, in case some random scroat decided they just had to have our late 20th century flymo...
New garage is too small to house all the gardening stuff tho, so some of it had to go into the shed. But the shed was in a sorry state when we arrived: a leaky roof had left it sodden. It desperately needed some TLC.
 |
| Looking a little forlorn... |
New hat
At some point it would be great to have a go at greening this roof, but new boards & felt will do for now.
 |
| New boards & felt |
Thanks Hubby :)
The new roof gave the shed a chance to dry out, for the 1st time in many a year. Amazingly the walls & floor were still serviceable, so time for a smart new jacket.
Pick a paint scheme
Inspiration came from a couple of different sources:
- Last Summer, a mate revamped her shed in fabulous beach hut style.
- Also last Summer, Cuprinol had an ad of a little geezer buzzing round gardens, being sad at neglected sheds & delighted at brightly painted woodwork. Repainting the shed need not mean "Once all over in shit brown".
- Sochi. Yep, the Winter Olympics. & Putin & his goons & their anti-gay laws. & then there's the ongoing state-by-state fight in the US for gay marriage. I'm still stunned that some folk get so het up about which people choose snog each other, & try to dictate who people fall in love with. I'm also amazed at the grace & humour with which the LGBT community campaign. So I've been feeling the need to fly the rainbow flag in solidarity... & cos it's the best flag :)
The LGBT rainbow flag has 6 colours, which is handy cos the shed is 18 planks high at its tallest. It's all coming together...
Supplies!
Down the shops I was delighted at the range of colours available. But it wasn't all about the aesthetics, I had some practical requirements too:
- Water-based. I'm sick of the faff of oil-based paints. They smell bad, take ages to dry, require undercoats, are bad for your skin, are a bitch to clean off your brushes, then a special trip to the Household Waste Recovery Centre to get rid of the mucky thinners. Total palaver.
- Stain, not paint. Paint will flake & I'm trying to keep maintenance to a miniumum... That might be optimistic but hey.
- All colours from 1 range. This is a half-baked theory that, if they were designed as a set, they'll work better in combination & will weather consistently. Worth a punt...
Bit of a problem with the last rule: some ranges didn't have all the colours. So I took pics of the sample blocks:
 |
| That's none of yer shit brown... |
And used Framatic to make my own colour chart:
 |
| & the winners are... |
OK, so the red is the Coral it says on the tin, & the purple is actually Fushia pink, but I think it'll work.
 |
| Obligatory perspective tin line-up shot |
Get cracking
When approaching jobs, I often like to do the hard bit 1st. It gets it out of the way whilst I've got the beans to tackle it, then I can coast when I'm knackered.
But not this job. This was done in a right old higgledy piggledy fashion.
 |
| Top down, to postpone scrabbling around on the floor |
 |
| 2 colours down - so far so good |
I took the guttering off to paint behind - I'm not completely slapdash...
The back of the shed is shaded by the beech hedge. The boards got greener the closer they got to the floor. If I want vibrant colours all round, that'll need sanding back. Out with the power tools!
 |
| The flat sander is noisy but waaaaay quicker than sanding by hand |
Some painting sessions involved sitting on the oil tank to do the window side:
 |
| The long reach radiator roller came in handy |
What about the door?
 |
| Missed a bit... |
The boards that make up the door don't neatly divide by 6. Continuing the horizontal stripe might work, but might look a mess if I can't do it well. Solid colour then? Would be a shame.
Then my mate Roger, an artist, had a suggestion: Offset vertical bands, a bit like Tetris. Genius!
Out with the chalk:
 |
| No formula here: draw a line, then have a guess where the best place for the next line is |
Yep, I think Roger's idea will work beautifully.
There will now be a whopping great intermission
That's as far as I got last year. I watched the unpainted wood get repeatedly drenched over the Winter, never getting the right combination of dry, warm (enough) & motivation. Pants. Have I mucked it up? Will the colours of next year look obviously different from this years? & is this just some lazy Grand Designs-esque fake jeopardy to inject some drama? (Clue: No)
Chip away at it
As the evenings lengthened this Spring, I tried to nibble away at it. Even if I did one colour on the door in an evening, it would still move the shed forward.
& it worked: in no time at all the door was done, along with a sneaky 2nd coat on (most of) last year's colours. Yay!
 |
| Wow the camera really blings some of the those colours... |
So that's it then - all finished?
Well, not quite, cos the door wasn't the last bit. Nope, I'd avoided the whole side by compost corner. I managed to knock that off one sunny weekend.
 |
| Finished! |
& I've not done the metalwork yet. Nor the inside... Hmm... there's a lot of spiders in there...
But the outside is done & looks better than I imagined. I posted a photo to Facebook & the Solidarity Shed got a whole lotta love. Thanks guys :D
The epilogue
While writing this post, we had sunshine with showers, & this happened:
 |
| Yay for April showers... in May |
Paint the whole world with a rainbow :)
Fantastic!
ReplyDelete