More things that go bump in the night

In  this case, perhaps it was less of a "bump" in the night and more of a "creaking slide" down the hill.

When we first moved here, at the edge of the garden there was a shed, which quickly became affectionately known as the sh*t shed. It was a pretty old, barn-like construction (decades old, if not more) with a corrugated tin roof, and it housed all manner of rubbish and clutter - when we arrived it was literally full to the rafters with rubbish that we had inherited from the previous owners.

The first of our many concerted attempts at clearing it out was in November 2014, when we had our HelpX friends Nick and Tess with us and Nick spent a grubby afternoon amassing piles and piles of rubbish that he had extracted from the shed.

The removal of some of the rubbish and clutter allowed us to use a small section of the shed as overflow storage for our own things - tools and various items that didn't fit into the other storage areas we had set aside. So the sh*t shed briefly became a useful storage space for us until, in late July 2015, we received the bombshell from our geometra (architect/surveyor) that we needed to take the shed down.

This was all due to the fact that we were applying for planning permission to build a new tool shed (as well as erect a pergola and erect a polytunnel), and in order for permission to be granted for these things, we would first need to be visited by an inspector from Florence, and... because technically one is only allowed to have one outbuilding (the shed for which we were applying for permission), the geometra advised us that we would need to dismantle the poor old sh*t shed (he didn't call it that), as well as the chicken house (which, at the time, was a goose house). The full story is here.

When we reacted with alarm at the news that we needed to dismantle the shed (and would need to do so in double-quick time, as the news came just a week before the visit from the inspector was due to happen), our geometra relented, and said that maybe if we just took the roof off it, it would appear as if we were in the process of dismantling it, and that would probably be sufficient. So we opted for the less destructive (and less disruptive) approach, cleared out as many of our own things from the shed as possible, and prepared ourselves for the roof-removing task.

New homes were needed for our items.

The shed was mostly cleared out.

And so it was that a week later, our friends, the Phillips family, came to our aid and spent the afternoon helping us to remove the roof from the shed (as well as the sides from the chicken house).

And thus the sh*t shed was rendered bare. The inspector from Florence was seemingly appeased by what he saw and didn't raise it as an issue, and so there the shed stood, and continued to stand, in skeletal form, for several years, a reminder of times gone by, a nod to the past history of the house.

The shed continued to gift us more finds along the way. In April 2017 we unearthed more, er, "treasure" from in and around the shed:

The gift that kept on giving.

And even in April 2019, there was still rubbish to be pulled out, as well as the rusty pieces of corrugated roofing to dispose of, until finally the shed was clear:

Over the years we came up with a few different thoughts and ideas as to what to do with the shed. We loved it as an old agricultural structure, and we considered putting the roof back on, shoring it up, re-building it, turning it into an indoor gym area, and various other ideas.

In recent months we noticed that the uprights were no longer entirely upright and a bit of a lean had developed on the whole structure and we realised that we would need to do something with it soon if we were to keep it standing.

Then, one morning a few weeks ago, Stuart said "OH! look!" and I looked and said "What?", completely mystified as to what he was trying to show me... until a few seconds later my brain clicked in and I registered that where once had stood the skeleton of the sh*t shed, there was now an empty space.

Peering over the edge of the garden fence we saw the sad collapsed heap of the old shed. It had finally succumbed to gravity and the elements and had quietly slid down the hill.

Something's missing!

A different view.

A sad heap.

We were saddened by the loss of the shed, but Stuart had already begun thinking of how we could re-purpose it to give at least the sturdier elements of it a new lease of life in a completely different form. So, chainsaw in hand, I began cutting free the flat beams and we began constructing a form of raised bed at the edge of the lawn (just outside the fencing), using the beams - held in place between pieces of rebar - as edging. We then added some wire fencing to the top of the edging (in an attempt to keep wildlife out), planted the cypress tree that Dean & Gavin had bought us back in August(!), re-sited the bird feeder to the new bed, then mulched the entire area with wood chippings.

And now, the view from the garden looks like this:

There still remains the large part of the shed in, shall we say, "flat pack" form, halfway down the hillside. We intend to rescue it all and sort through the pieces, keeping aside the sturdy beams to be used in future projects (let us know if you have any ideas!), while those in more of a sorry state will be added to the winter wood pile. 

So, a bit of a sad tale, but the sh*t shed lives on, just in a different form and different location(s).