It was a beautiful day in the Pacific Northwest today, despite the forecast of scattered showers and sun breaks.
I made great progress on my outdoor project; removing an old, rusting storage shed in my side yard.
The demolition went slowly at first. A friend told me to dismantle the roof first. Good advice. The roof might have hit me in the head if I’d done the walls first. I was lucky I didn’t have to crawl up on the roof to loosen screws.
Since my friend is going to help me haul the shed to the landfill in her pickup, I just couldn’t whack it down with a sledgehammer. I needed to unscrew hundreds of screws, or was it thousands, so that the metal panels will fit neatly in the pickup.
I asked the contractor I hired to do repairs to my house if I needed to buy a drill to get the screws out. He said no. Just push in hard and turn them, “lefty loosey.”
The second contractor who helped me with repairs had a drill that loosened really long screws in just seconds. Maybe one of those drills would have been helpful after all. Anyway, I lefty looseyed screws until my hands ached. Screw, after screw, after screw.
Patience isn’t one of my virtues. But I kept at it steadily.
I worked on dismantling the shed all day. Things went faster due to the great weather. Sunday I held an umbrella in the crook of my arm as I worked. It was slow going.
Finally I was finished. As you can see from the photo, it was getting dark.
Here’s an article on how to remove a garden shed, “Tear Down This Shed,” from HGTV.
