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Date: 20/04/13
Demoli-Shed
Well, once the snow and ice had melted off (it took a couple of weeks), it was clear that there was no saving it, so down it had to come.
It was, of course, necessary to wait for time, energy and weather to combine to create the opportunity to get the job done. The forecast showing pretty good for at least Saturday meant that today was going to be the day (allied to the fact that the server at 45cat was throwing a wobbler, preventing any uploading).
I'd actually made a start on Friday afternoon, when I started clearing out the junk from in there (and junk it is, too; nothing of any value, in case anyone reading this in the vicinity was thinking about sneaking around at dead of night looking for swag). It was then that I realised that sheds - being a central plank of the physical Universe - obey Tardisian principles (formulated, as if I need tell you, by the famous Armenian cosmologist Arsen Tardisian (1904-69)); in particular, the Second Tardisian Law which states that, although matter expands infinitely, the space containing it actually contracts, which is why - when you have emptied a cupboard, drawer, shed, what-'ave-yew - the stuff you have taken out will no longer all fit back in again.
So once I'd hammered off the remains of the roof on the side of the shed nearest to camera in the above photo, it was out with the plant pots; the small packet of wall-tiles; the dismantled unit which my television and video used to sit on/in before I turned my back on TV; the foot-stool; the small skein of steel wire; the garden forks and spades (no longer including the one I'd used to dig myself out of the snow three weeks ago, which had been leaning against the kitchen wall ever since). In short, the assembled cast of "it'll come in handy for something" accumulated over nearly thirty years and two generations of residence.
As there was nowhere else to put all this, they were placed on the back yard or leant up against the house wall. Having run out of time, I resolved to move out what remained when I came to do the main job on Saturday.
I spent an inordinate amount of time pondering my plan of action for the actual dismantling itself, primarily because I had this image of the whole wretched, rickety edifice coming down about my ears (the shed itself, as if sensing its impending doom and wanting to get its retaliation in first, banged its lintel against my head on Friday). There was also the question of the window. I could have reverted to the slash-and-burn technique of the average toddler and put a hammer through the bastard, but I could foresee two likely outcomes: either the glass would prove stronger than the structure it was part of, the hammer would bounce of it and smack me in the kisser; or, more plausibly, that I'd be finding little shards of glass in the grass for years to come. I knew that I had to take a more practical approach and at least try to get it out in one piece.
I managed, for once, to stay comfortably in bed until gone eleven on Saturday morning so, after lunch, it was about a quarter past one before I set forth.
The first job was to remove much of the remaining contents of the shed; the box of Polyfilla, the paint roller and three tins of white emulsion amongst them. I then took the hammer to what was left of the roof. It was then that I came to realise that - contrary to what I'd thought - the wire rack against the back wall (you know, one of those that they used for displaying packets of crisps in small village shops) was not holding up the remainder of the roof, but vice versa, so that when the last laths of the roof went over the side and out, the bloody rack - holding a collection of rusted spanners, chisels, rasps and jemmies - came lurching towards me like an over-friendly drunk. I threw a hip-block on it which would have graced the Superbowl and managed to eject the contents of the rack onto the shed floor before getting the rack outside and on its side against the - equally surplus-to-requirements - coal bunker.
Then it was time to tackle the window. It seemed to be held in by a surround of battens, so it was just a case of levering them off, leaving the top one till last. I nearly got it right, but something compelled the wretched thing to fall out before I was quite ready. Luckily it hit mostly soft garden, but it clipped a brick which took a small sliver out of one corner.
Compared to that, the door itself was easy enough, although it was only when I'd unscrewed both the top and bottom hinges and wondered why it hadn't toppled that I realised that there was a middle hinge hidden behind what was left of the felt with which I'd inexpertly covered the shed in about 2000.
Finally, it was time to start on taking the sides down, which had given me some unease, as I had visions of it demolishing me rather than the other way round. Again, as with the window, I could have just hammered it to death, but I wanted to keep as many of the laths in one piece as possible, as I had a proposed use for them in helping me to re-establish the borders around the front lawn (where either the lawn has encroached upon the borders or - more frequently - the borders have eaten into the grassy bits).
It was here that I found myself stymied. The frame of the shed was held together by bolts and, sheds being naturally outdoor creatures (and the felt covering having long ago been blown off by successive gales), these were now rusted up, and getting the spanner on the nuts (if you'll pardon the image) was of little consequence because the whole damn thing moved when you turned them. Worse still from the practical standpoint was that the other end of the bolt had no slot in the head, so not even the option of putting a screwdriver on one end and a spanner on the other (which in any case would have involved a combination of contortionism and gymnastics which Nadia Comăneci herself would have blenched at) was available.
I sat on the back door step and pondered for a while. The possibility of - as we IT veterans say - 'initialising the FBH' (*) occurred to me again, but ultimately I dismissed it. Instead, I went at it with hammer and chisel to try to expose enough of the bottom bolt-head on the side nearest to camera (see above - again) to be able to jemmy it off. This took ages, largely because - whatever I aimed the chisel at - the wrong bits split off. After about ten minutes, I'd managed to get enough access to be able to crowbar the bolt-head so that the bolt itself was now hopelessly bent. This meant it now wouldn't turn when I undid the nut.
One down. The top one - in deference to another ineluctable law of nature - proved to be far more difficult and, having fully exposed the head, I had to resort to a hacksaw to cut far enough through the bolt at that end that the claw end of the hammer would break it off. Two down.
The top one at the other end of that side wall proved impervious even to the hacksaw. Luckily, as the first end was now free, I could swivel and sway the wall enough to break the wood off at the bolts and the whole wall fell - not entirely gracefully - to the ground.
This left me with one remaining dilemma: the two end walls. Which one did I try to get down first? The end nearer the house (the one where the door had been) or the back wall? The one with the now-empty doorway would probably have been favourite, were it not for the need to have somewhere to jump to should the whole lot decide to come down at once as a result. The back wall, then. But then I came across The Bolt Problem again, and this time access to the bolt-head was going to be almost impossible due to the presence of a recalcitrant weigala bush up against the back. This also made the only viable alternative - swivelling and bending the wall à la the first side - difficult as well, since I could only wrench the confounded thing in one direction.
A fair bit of sweating, swearing and use of the crowbar later, however, and the back wall joined its former neighbour on the grass. That left the doorway wall - and more bolts which, by that time, I couldn't be arsed even thinking about undoing. So it was more swivelling and wrenching, except that - as there was a big area of SFA where the door had been - it wasn't too strong anyway, and I merely succeeded in breaking off the section furthest from the bolts. This left a stump which at least prevented the long wall on the fence side from falling on me, and this remainder was - with some difficulty - finally wrestled into submission.
Three hours - job (more or less) done. I've earned the Guinness I've had whilst writing this.
So, what am I left with?
I suppose it's sad in a sentimental sort of way; a landmark of my life gone. But, as I said before, I'd been hoping that Nature would somehow beat me to it in removing a tiresome and reproving responsibility from my life. At least it outlived one of the people who put it up by nearly a full quarter of a century.
Trouble is, not only have I got to break up what you see here into manageable (and in some cases, usable) bits, but I've also got a back yard full of junk which I have nowhere else to put. I may need to get our dear Council to come and take it all away. At a price, of course.
* Fucking Big Hammer
File under: Me
