More front garden…

Landscaping is all done – looking good so far.  Next up we need to add some green things.

Face the front

The front garden has suffered 18 months of abuse, being home to piles of rubble, bags of sand, gravel, pallets of bricks, various other building supplies, old radiators, and one blue porta-loo.   All these have left their mark, so it’s time to give the front garden an overhaul!

First things first, the digger makes short work of clearing EVERYTHING!

Next, laying the membrane and marking out the edging:

And the latest progress so far – edging has been laid and base substrate for the drive is in place.  More to come tomorrow…

Shed in the corner

To complete the veg patch we have got ourselves a new shed.  It’s a 7×7 Corner Shed from B&Q, made by Shire Garden Buildings.

Overall, its been pretty straightforward to put up, in contrast to some of the reviews on the B&Q website.  However one weakness is definitely the shed floor, the tongue and groove timber looks nice but seems way too thin – it flexes worryingly underfoot so we’ll definitely need to add another layer of board to reinforce the floor.  This isn’t a big deal but was a tad disappointing…

We painted the panels before assembly, which made things sooo much easier than painting after assembling it.  As with our fences, we’ve gone for Cuprinol Shades “Wild Thyme” combined with “Country Cream” for some of the details.  Here’s a few shots of the shed assembly in progress.

Pretty pleased with progress after one day’s work.  We still need to fit the door latches, glaze the windows and finish off the trim around the roof felt.

Veg patch part deux

We’ve made a little more progress!  We borrowed a Kärcher pressure washer and blasted all the filth and green muck off the fences around the veg patch.  Once they’d dried out we then painted them with “Wild Thyme” paint from the Cuprinol Garden Shades range.  Was really impressed with the paint, it only needed one coat and went on really well!

We settled for the old-school approach with brushes rather than purchasing a spray; that was after reading endless horror stories online about sprays going wrong, getting clogged every couple of minutes, coating next door’s garden/house/car/cat, etc!  Brushes required some elbow-grease, but the afternoon remained calamity free.

Next up: finish the base for the corner shed (to the right of the apple tree).  Then finish off the gravel.  Then buy and build the shed!

 

 

 

Veg patch

Now the decking is finished we have turned out attention to the jungle at the bottom of the garden.  This was once a veggie patch, but last year’s building works meant it was somewhat neglected and turned in to a knee high collection of weeds.  The mission:

1. Destroy everything*
2. Flatten everything*
3. Protect everything* (weedproof membrane)
4. Build raised beds
5. Gravel the bits between the beds
6. Plant vegetables
7. Harvest vegetables
8. Eat vegetables

* everything except the apple tree

After all the fun of building the decking, we decided to cheat and get some kits for the raised beds, from Harrod Horticultural.  Yes it would have been cheaper to buy and cut the timber ourselves, no we have no regrets about the time saved simply screwing the ready-to-go kits together without all the measuring, cutting, staining and drilling…

A few photos of progress so far:

Now we are waiting for the rest of our Cotswold Buff gravel – which will hopefully arrive in the next couple of days.

And here is the latest progress in a fancy Photosynth panorama.

Building decking – part eight: finished (for now)

So we’ve got it more or less finished for the time being.  The remaining section of steps can wait until we figure out what to do elsewhere in the garden.

Building decking – part seven

We’ve been busy getting the deck nearer completion, although it’s taken a lot longer than planned, due to a lack of spare time!

Left to do:

• Apply two coats of “Natural Oak” Ronseal Decking Protector to remaining boards
• Attach remaining trim pieces to hide the joists on each step
• Build the remaining section of steps – although might leave this until we figure out what to do with the adjacent area

Building decking – part six

Next job is to build the steps.  Instead of building stringers and suspending the steps from them, we chose to make two stacked “boxes”.  Most of the effort and difficulty in this was getting the ground level and at the correct height – lots of sand, effort and a few bags of concrete later, we got the first box section in (approximately) the right place.

Then we added the second step…

Building decking – part five

After building the first section of deck, we had to do it all again on the second section.  Used a slightly different approach of making the frame first, then moving it in to place – then adding the remaining joists and noggins.  This worked well with the smaller section of deck.

Next job will be the steps…

Building decking – part four

After finishing the frame, we could fix the decking boards in place.

After cutting the boards to length, we used green coated decking screws to secure them, allowing a 5mm gap between each board.  Having two cordless drills was very handy, one for drilling the pilot holes, the other to drive the screws – all 252 of them!

Next job will be doing it all again on the smaller second section of deck – then building the steps.