Garden Houses
by DAN VOS
Vos Energy Concepts
Dan Vos
Gardens are green. We plant our own flowers or veggies, water them, watch them grow and chow them down with gusto when things get ripe. At least that’s the plan.
There seems to be many obstacles in getting things to work so smoothly. My wife Barb claimed she needed a space to store her ever-growing accumulation of garden tools and such. So we built a combination garden house/storage building. The storage was supposed to be for my extra and recyclable stuff, etc.
Well, her area was bigger than planned even before it was completed, so I added on to it. Guess who wants even more now. Yeah, you got that right: Barb. She now uses the space to hang out in kind of like a woman-cave (candles on at night with light jazz playing). I thought I was supposed to get that man cave thing. Oh well, the things guys do to keep their loves happy.
Seriously, though, our garden house is a very wonderful thing. One of my favorite parts is the screened-in porch on the side of it. We nestled the place between some trees for shading purposes and we use that thing a lot. It’s my favorite place for taking Sunday afternoon naps. So I guess that’s my man-cave part of it. Bears sleep in their caves right? GRRR naps are manly; it says so right here.
I built the foundation as you would a deck, yet I seriously reinforced the floor framing so I can store my manly tractor in there. I then stick-built the walls and roof. I used windows that I found here and there cheap. I used extra cultured stone from many jobs and I even used some real stone for added flavor and texture. The doors are old ones I pulled out of homes as they were replaced. The screens I made from 2×3 cedar and the screen doors are from cedar decking.
Barb does hang out in her area, which we separated with a used door, and I must remember to keep it closed if I know what’s good for me.
My next project is to put up gutters and a rain barrel. One of my father’s favorite old sayings was that we were “jumping around like a ball-bat in a rain barrel.” Some old things keep coming back.
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