The Shed

Every Aussie bloke loves his shed. It's usually the little tin building in the back yard that was at some stage laughingly used to hold his car. Of course it was never actually big enough to hold a car - at least not if you wanted to be able to open the door of the damn thing once you had driven it in. You would usually have to punch out the rear window and crawl out through the broken glass.

As a result the shed has ended up a cross between a workshop, storage area and sanctuary from the real world. The car has been left outside to rust, slowly filling with water from the rain pouring in through the broken rear window.

We wanted a shed too. Unfortunately our home (affectionately known as the "Dulwich Hilton") didn't even have a little tin building in the back yard. There was barely room for a tin dog house in the back yard.

We're very practical people. We know which end of the hammer is the best end for hitting things and which end is the best bit to hang on to. We even know the difference between a "Phillips" and a "Pozidrive" screwdriver. We can build things, solder things, assemble things and break things. We also know how to collect things.

So we went out in search of our shed. After some months we found a 50 year old warehouse in the inner west of Sydney, only ten minutes drive from the Dulwich Hilton. It had everything. It had four walls and a roof. For a shed, that's everything.

We bought the shed at auction. Now this is a very nerve wracking experience and I don't recommend you try it. We had a Buyer's Agent act on our behalf so that the other bidders wouldn't see how much we were shitting ourselves. When we turned up at the auction and saw all the interest in the place, our agent's first reaction was "There's no way we're gonna get this". He was wrong. I'm not sure if we were more surprised or he was.

Now we couldn't actually afford to live in the luxurious surroundings of the Dulwich Hilton and have our shed, so obviously we had to move out of our beloved Dulwich Hilton and live in the shed. It wasn't a particularly attractive prospect as the place had spent the last 15 years as a screen printer's workshop. There was ink all over the walls and while there were two toilets, there was no hot water nor shower or kitchen facilities. (That's the shed - not the Dulwich Hilton.)

With the help of many of our friends as well as Greig's father (who having just retired was just itching to sink his teeth into some major project), we started to clean the place up a bit. Walls were pulled down, termites terminated, plumbing installed, electrics re-wired, lighting replaced, bathrooms built, kitchens plonked down in the middle of the floor and paint slopped around. "Cheap and cheerful" was the motto. (That basically means that we spent all our money buying the place and had none left to renovate.)

We took about two months to prepare the place so that we could move in. We were only after the basics. We needed somewhere to sleep, somewhere to shit, somewhere to wash and somewhere to eat. (Often in that order.)

Looking at the "West Wing".

David in our beautiful bathroom

Daisy is butch (he wishes)

Our beautiful bedroom before . . .

. . . our beautiful bedroom after

Greig in his "kitchen"

The shed already had four offices on the west side that we simply cleaned up, stuffed the walls full of rockwool insulation and then painted. Greig has such a practical family - his uncle spent days cleaning and painting while we both wandered off to work. Two of those offices became bedrooms, one a lounge/sitting room and one for the Lab. We can't exist without the lab - that's where all the useful and practical stuff is kept, and we needed a lot of useful and practical stuff to complete the project. Collectively these rooms became known as "The West Wing".

While we were doing that, our faithful sexaholic plumber, David, worked on destroying the bathroom area and rebuilding it. Well, most of it. He installed a very sexy gas instant hot water system that never runs out of hot. Shit! Gas! He then installed some gas to run said sexy hot water system. He dug huge trenches in our beautiful concrete floor and ran gas, water and sewage to where the kitchen would eventually end up. He managed all of this while living out of the back of his old beat up panel van, parked out the back of dubious Chinese restaurants around Sydney.

We enlisted the help of other practical friends like Daisy to help us cable the shed. He and Greig installed a very practical intelligent lighting system to run all the lights in the place. At the same time we ran a few kilometres of very practical network cabling and coax for our computers, phones and video feeds. Brad busied himself scraping very tragic vinyl floor tiles off the floor so we could put some very tragic carpet in its place.

We eventually had to drag in Geoff, our over-sexed sparky (there's a pattern emerging here) to re-do the main power feeds into the building. All the cables were as old as the building and to suggest that they were a little sub-standard would understate the problem a tad. We kept on tripping the only working circuit breaker whenever the plumber tried to use his Hilti at the same time as Greig's dad started the circular saw. The place would be plunged into darkness and we'd trip over each other trying to find the distribution panel.

Finally the place had what we considered the bare necessities for us to move in. We trucked our belongings from the Dulwich Hilton over to the shed, and filled the place. What? Already!!!! At the same time we advertised the Dulwich Hilton for rent in the Sydney Star Observer. There was no way we could sell the place - we had to keep it. Besides, the income from rent might just be enough to keep us eating. Luckily a couple of very nice young ladies saw the ad and moved in almost immediately.

So finally in June 2003, after about two months of prep, we moved into the shed. There's still a heap to be done. For a start we have to finalise all the paperwork with council to make the place a "residence". This will involve getting lots of useless reports telling us what we already know, replacing some of the material in the building with more suitable material, making it fire-proof, sound-proof, water-proof and presumably earthquake proof. Most of it simply involves forking out huge lumps of cash to various consultants as the council sees fit, and of course to the council themselves.

In the meantime, we have our shed. Not only that, but we can drive the car in, open all the doors, jump out and sit down on the lounge and watch old beta video tapes of Vega$ starring Robert Urich.