Come and See Our Spiffed Up Black Shed

We gave our black shed a facelift. Our shed is on the far side of our property. We don’t see it from the main house, only from the screened-in porch or my office window. But when you live on the water, it’s like you have two front yards. You have people looking at your place from the street and from the river. The water traffic is mostly in the summer. But when the river freezes, we have plenty of snow mobiles, and walkers passing by our house. So this helps you to understand why I want our lonely storage shed to look its best.

The Clean-Up

My first step was to go inside. I never used to go in there as that was the domaine of @GerainttheWelsh and the squirrels. But I did a big clean-up. It was unpleasant as, despite our best efforts to plug the holes, the squirrels had a sizeable stockpile of food. I sold a few things on Facebook marketplace and that helped to open up the floor space. This is primarily where we store our outdoor stuff over the winter.

Painting the Shed

The next step was a paint job. I had been admiring several Instagram accounts where people painted their houses and cottages black and I was smitten. Black was a good choice for our little shed. It matches our new black windows. I used copy cat by Beautitone paints.

Trim For The Shed

My partner in renos, @GerainttheWelsh cut trim made from left over pine wood that we had. We had a dry run at a slightly more narrow trim but it just didn’t look right to me. Geraint added an additional to piece to thicken the trim. The trim stain colour is Driftwood.

The Window Box

I am so excited to have a window box. There is very little colour on this side of our yard because the hose doesn’t reach that far plain and simple. There was no way I was going to plant flowers on this side so that I had to drag a hose or watering can. But I digress. The reason I am so excited about this flower box is that the greenery in it will always be fake. Yup. I said it. The greenery is fake.

@GerainttheWelsh built a light-weight box to fit plastic removable boxes. This way, I bring the boxes in the house in the winter and make them pretty and put them back.

When my winter decorated pots were still frozen solid last spring, I was watching @plaidsandpoppies with her removable containers in her garage. She was creating displays for spring in the warmth of her garage. So this removable liner will allow me to bring the greenery inside and update it for the season then put it back outside. I can’t wait to update it for the fall, lol.

The Concrete Platform

We had two concrete steps under the door and I wanted to update them. You may have seen on my Instagram stories that I painted them white and then tried to apply a stencil to the concrete. But, the concrete has a stamped pattern in it make it bumpy. When applying the paint on the stencil, you had to use a lot of paint to get into the crevices and then the stencil would bleed. Complete fail.

I was frustrated and just wanted to get this platform finished. So I painted the over the stencil paint in white and gave myself over night to come up with a new idea. In the morning I grabbed a can of grey paint from the basement, Revere Pewter to be exact. My plan was to paint a pattern by hand and if I didn’t like it I would just paint it all grey. My years of doodling on paper must have paid off. Because the first thing that came to mind was dividing it into sections and painting alternates. So this is what I came up with. I am actually quite pleased with it. I added a couple of layers of flat clear coat and that was done. I had @jennykomeda‘s porch in the back of my mind.

The Garden

In this area of our yard we have a big maple tree and the grass does not grow well around it. We have areas of bare soil with weeds. My idea was to clean this up a bit and build a box with a couple of shrubs in it. @GerainttheWelsh executed my request perfectly and we filled it with earth with a cover of black paper and mulch. We watered these plants in and for the first little while, but from now on they can survive with just the rain. We will add a little grass seed in the area around to see if we can get anything growing.

The Exterior

The rest of the area around this shed is a work in progress. One of the sides is visible from the street so I will plan something pretty to put there next summer. The side visible from the water is where a few things get stored like our hockey net. After all Canadians, who knows when a game of ice hockey will break out!

The Interior

Will you get an inside tour? Never. I cleaned up inside, but it is a shed. Is is definitely not social media worthy. However, the lucky squirrels that manage to chew their way in will have a nice winter home.

The Shed Door

The last thing is the colour of the shed door. What are your thoughts? I did some research on black buildings and most of them had black doors. I will go with black for now but there is something inside me that wants a great colour on that door. But I can’t decide. Send me your paint colours.

Always

Leslie