Thursday 6 September 2012

My most recycled structure so far

For reason that will soon become clear, we had to build a shed down near the chicken run. The challenge: To spend as little money as possible.

It's been so long since I made the pallet pig ark and chicken house, I'd forgotten how much fun it is to build with pallets. From the ground up, two pallets made the base, which was topped with some ply a friend was going to throw away. Two more pallets made the back wall and, with one for each side and another for the front, we nearly had a building.

At this stage it looked a lot like a bar, which coincided nicely with my birthday:


By a superb coincidence, the cladding for last year's temporary solar shower cubicle...


...was exactly the right length for the back and one side, and the uprights were re-used as uprights and roof timbers.

After another couple of days it looked like this:


And this:


The corrugated iron came from a friend's garden, the window came from our Shack when we were gutting it in 2009 and the door you might recognise as one I made a few weeks ago (originally intended for the new solar shower cubicle). The beauty of this kind of building is that you don't have to worry too much about making the wind braces beautiful - you can just slap them in any old how, which has a beauty of its own:


I had enough nails and screws in boxes for the whole structure, which came in under budget at €0.00 (£0.00).

4 comments:

Alex said...

Hurrah! Looks great. That window fits the hole so perfectly. Another moment of joy!

Roots to Fruit said...

but you're keeping us in suspense regarding the purpose?

the devolutionary said...

Alex (who co-built this with me until [it was] nearly finished) - yes! Bit of hassle with hanging the door but it swings shut on its own which is another joyous thing!

Roots - welcome to comments! I'll give you half of it: It's an animal food store and general purpose shed that needed to be Pepito (the horse) proof. But the reason it needed to be built will have to wait until...

Arch said...

It's a man shed for Alex, every man should have one.

So they say !

A very very boring note of caution but you should keep glass and tin sheets away from horses, sort of sure Pepito could flated it if accessible remember the tree ?

It's a great shed and has character, and maybe you should have a permanent bar on site hey next to the pool !

Am sure with your skills you could build a pool for free or near it, digging it into a hillside would help with drainage maybe think roman plung pool square stone, brick, block box with steps down one side lined with tiles to keep the water in, salt water would also make it easier, worth it's .. In gold this weather ?

And a big belated Happy Brithday Alex hope you had a great one