Shed Removal, Garden Addition

When I bought this property, there were five outbuildings on it. One was a garage with a dirt floor, and one was a garden shed on a concrete pad; these I will discuss in future posts.

This post is about the other three. There was shed that was about 14'x8', with a 6' high roof. There was a second shed that was slightly smaller in width and depth, and that was less than 4' high. The last one was a dog house, in a dog run enclosure. The first two had dirt floors.

These buildings were a real eye sore in the back corner of the lot.
 None of them had been properly maintained. The shingled roofs were covered in mold and lichen. Their bases had been chewed through by critters, riddles with holes, and rotten. None of these buildings had likely been used in several years.

 The dog run was completely overgrown with bushes. It had also been used as a grass and brush clipping dump for a few years. It had a floor made of 12" x 12" x 2" paving blocks, many of which were rotten to pieces.

It took hours to finally clear out the dog run, and cut the fence down. When I finally did; I pulled the roof off of the dog house, and discovered the remains of a dog in there. It had probably been there for at least a few years, and was a rather unpleasant surprise. I gave the dog a proper burial, and broke down the dog house with a sledge hammer and a claw hammer.

The small and large sheds were handled the same way. I started by removing their shingles, to make removing the roofs easier.

Then I started from the top down; busting out first the roof boards, then the wall boards with the sledge hammer.

It turns out that the largest building was sided with aluminum siding. I reclaimed all of that, and made about $80 selling it off as scrap metal!

The smaller of the two sheds I completly removed. I filled the post holes from its supports with dirt, and seeded over the dirt that was once its floor.

The larger shed was not completely demolished. When I had it down to a roofless skeleton, I stopped. This was because I wanted a garden, and here was the perfect spot (as far as this lot goes anyways).

I loaded up all of the waste from this demolition, and took it to the trash dump. It cost about $27 to get rid of it all.

From the skeleton of the larger shed, it wasn't much work to build the garden enclosure. I got some plastic fencing made of recycled plastic bottles, and enclosed the framing in it using a stapler. I also had to build a hinged gate with a proper latch. These two things have succeeded really well at keeping hungry critters out.

On the West side of the garden, I used the concrete paving stones that were under the dog run to block off space for a few compost piles.

The end result of all this effort has been a much cleaner looking back yard, and a nice place for  a garden!