One of my goals for the year (that I didn’t list here) was to demolish and replace the shed that came with my house. We’ve known since we moved in that it would have to go eventually – the base board is supported by a few bricks rather than a foundation, the doors didn’t quite fit together when they closed, and one side of the roof had retained moisture to the point where it grew mushrooms along with other molds. And that wasn’t the side where water dripped in!
When I opened the shed in the spring, I discovered that somebody had been living in it over the winter, courtesy of a hole dug through the far wall. This, on top of the many hard to spot hornet or yellow jacket nests (all abandoned by this point) was the tipping point. The yellow jackets were a problem the first summer here, leading to this little tidbit one morning:
“So this morning, I took a big bucket of soapy water outside after layering up really well and proceeded to totally whiff when flinging the water at the shed door. I aimed too low. On the plus side, I didn’t disturb any of them, so I was able to refill the bucket and try again.”
The yellow jackets had built nests on the inside of both shed doors, which made retrieving gardening supplies … nerve-wracking. Having discovered them just after a trip to Menard’s, I looked online for options other than bug spray, and found out that soapy water adheres to their wings and prevents them from flying, even once it’s dry. And the water dissolves the nest.
Now, three summers later, we finally reached the demolition stage. The upper left photo shows the roof after I started peeling shingles off – the wood was damaged enough it was breaking during the process. The upper right photo was taken during the fun process involving a pry bar and sledgehammer, with a controlled approach to make sure the shed fell into the garden rather than the neighbor’s fence. The bottom two photos are the remnants, with the smaller pieces lined up against the wall waiting for the city’s semi-annual trash day; the big pieces will take a couple people to move. The base board will come up as well – there’s a rotted section just before the bricks.
The bricks? Yes, those came with the house too, hidden behind the shed… who knows how long they’ve been stored there. I have plans for them, though not for the rolled up fencing that’s entangled with raspberries at the moment.