Bench and Outside Storage

This is another summer project that is not quite finished. I have been putting off posting about until it was finished, but I sort-of included it in my last post … and I may not ever finish it (for reasons I explain below), so I may as well post some more pix of it now.

We decided to use some of the heavy-duty modular shelving and some heavy-duty, sealable storage boxes (both from Bunnings, of course) to store all our gardening tools etc to stop them getting soaked whenever it rained. (Yes, I know, it is under cover. No, that doesn't stop them getting soaked. Every time it rains, the gutters back up, overflow, and we have a waterfall all the way along the eaves.)

This is what the area under the back verandah/porch/thing (outside our lounge room) looked like in October 2011. A mess.

Note the genuine 70s oregon panelling in bundles on the garden wall at left, and the dirt patch next to the back door at right. This had been a garden bed, but our pest report suggested that we get rid of it—which we did by demolishing it to ground level. Immediately behind the dirt patch is a pile of pavers. Both the pavers and the oregon panelling were very cheap eBay finds.

Anyway, we bought the modular shelving, and started cleaning up the area thus …

…and thus …

etc. (BTW: I did help too. Really!) M. then set to work paving the dirt patch with genuine 70s, ugly cement pavers (i.e., pavers which matched the original, ugly, 70s cement pavers) …

while I assembled the shelving …

Once M. finished the paving…

I took to the oregon with the circular saw and started to create a bench-top …

Work had to stop a while, for the cement to set (before shifting the whole structure onto the new pavers), and for the timber to be oiled (to make the surface water-proof.) In the following weeks we continued to saw, oil, and screw together the panels until …

What remains to be done is for a "roof" to be fixed over the high part of the shelving (we have the corrugated iron and the timber to fix it into place with) and a top to fill the gap at the join between the bench and the front panel—but we got distracted by vegie-box and stone-wall building.

Now that the rains are returning we have the incentive to complete the water-proofing project, but with a new roof for the whole house on the cards it is not clear whether there is any need to do this anymore. So this shelving will probably look like this until we know what is happening with the roof—which could be a while. And if we do nothing for long enough we will be able to move this whole structure, as it is, into a water-proof shed.