… About Our New Shed (and the Secret Slug Colony)

So we finally bought a new shed a couple of weeks ago and put it up on Sun., Aug. 12. (Sorry we’re so late to “report in.” Things have have been pretty busy lately!) We got quite a surprise when we moved the floor of the old shed. But I’m skipping ahead — let’s do this chronologically.

We got up bright and early and got started first thing in the morning. OK, not really. Rob made it out around 1:30 p.m. and moved everything out of the old shed, so there was stuff all over the yard. He also got the new shed unpacked. I finally came out around 2 p.m. and read through the instructions so we could formulate our plan of action.

First we needed to move the old shed base, and when we did we discovered several “colonies” of slugs living under there! There’s no denying that an individual slug is gross, but take our word for it: a whole pile of them is really disgusting. If you don’t agree, just look at the main photo above and these below for a few minutes (click to enlarge) and tell me you don’t get at least a little bit of the heebie-jeebies. And I didn’t even get any pictures of the big pools of slug slime…

Finding and dealing with the slugs slowed down our progress, as did trying to come up with a level base. We decided to use the old shed floor, but first we had to level the ground under it. After more than two hours we finally went with our “good enough!” philosophy and started putting the new shed together, which went pretty well. (I think most of you know that unlike most grown-ups, we LOVE putting stuff together!) There were a few pieces that took some extra “coaxing” (shoving) but Rob took care of those. I think we got it done pretty quickly — about an hour from start to finish.

4:44 p.m.	4:54 p.m.
5:07 p.m.	5:40 p.m.

5:52 p.m. — tah dah!

All that was left was to get everything that was in the old shed (a Rubbermaid Big Max, which was 7′ x 7′ x 8′) into the new Suncast Glidetop — which is only about 5′ x 7′ x 5′. It wasn’t that much cheaper than a bigger one, but we thought something squattier might hold up a little better in another freak windstorm (it made sense at the time…). Anyway, other than some wood shelves, our old broken mower (I ran over a pole and bent the shaft) and trimmer (I had nothing to do with that one!) and some buckets of rocks, everything fit. I read a bunch of reviews of the new shed before buying it and agree with what almost everyone who had bought one said: It’s a lot of money for a plastic box, but it’s a good plastic box! It’s sturdy and the sliding top is a pretty cool design.

So here’s the yard, empty again — except for the bags of dirt. We moved the old shed base over about a foot to allow a second area for this fall’s garden expansion. Speaking of the garden, it’s almost done for the year, other than “phase 2” of the tomatoes that haven’t ripened yet. More about that later…