At least thats what I said to the massive hornets that have been hanging out in our pool shed for the past few seasons. Not cool. There are a few (well probably more than a few but I'll spare you) odd things about me...one of them is I am horribly afraid of bees. Im pretty sure its a phobia. When they are around me, or I even hear a slight "buzzing" sound, I actually freak out. Ian was away on business a while back, and I noticed a wasp flying around our house (my phobia also includes wasps, hornets, really any kind of buzzing flying insect with a stinger) and I actually had a panic attack. Crying, difficultly breathing...it was ridiculous...as in me, Im ridiculous. I do recognize Im a little crazy, but hey, we all have fears right? Mine is bees. There you go. So Ian discovered a hornets nest in our shed, and we (well actually Ian) decided it was a good time to clean it out (since I ran screaming to the hills) and re-do the inside. The shed previously looked like this: Its a bit bright in that photo, but our next step will be actually painting the outside of the shed to match our deck (which we plan to stain the same colour). So here's what the inside of the shed looked like to begin with. Are you counting yet? Have you noticed have many rooms in this house were yellow when we moved in? Other than the obvious red, green, neon blue, pink, etc, yellow was a favorite of the previous homeowners. Dont get us wrong, we dont MIND yellow, but this shed needed a facelift. So step 1, was to paint the inside. We chose white (surprise, surprise!). Not because we love white and want to paint everything that colour, but because we looked at our paint cans in the basement and noticed we had a lot of primer sitting around. So white primer it is! It took Ian about 2 hours to paint it, and the walls were dry before he finished the door. The 37 degree weather may have had something to do with that. Last step was the door. Yep, thats REALLY white. Once we paint the outside of the shed a light grey (with navy trim) it might match a little better. Regardless, I wasn't willing to sit inside a boiling hot shed for 2 hours to paint it, so it was Ian's colour choice on this one. After we finished the painting, we installed a tall laundry cabinet beside the door. I got right into organizing that (my favorite part!! eee!!) and it can now store all of our pool supplies and other chemicals we keep hanging around for the pool. Our next step was to build a bench that could store all of our patio furniture cushions. We had seen a bunch of those nice storage boxes at Home Depot, Lowes, etc, but since we had the space in the shed, we figured why not save the space on our deck and keep it out of sight. So we built one. Correction- Ian built and I supervised. Im good at that. Before anything, we measured the wall and factored in, the size of the bench, place space for the lid to open and space above for the cabinets we wanted to install. Then we started to build. First, we built two identical box frames. Then we attached the back and one side of the frames to the actual wall of the shed because we know the shed is not level (most things in this house aren't...we've learnt that the hard way). If you’re just building a box to sit on the floor then cut 4 identical supports and attach them in the corners to tie the frames together, you can see we added in supports to the front corners and middle to strengthen the frame. To avoid having to cut the wainscoting we just made the box the same height, still making sure the measurements worked- we put the cushions inside the frame to ensure it was tall enough. We then double checked to make sure the lid would open with enough space. LOTS of measurements! We attached the bottom frame first, using shims to level because not all floors are created level! The walls are plywood, so we didn’t need drywall anchors. Once the bottom frame was level and screwed to the wall we leveled and attached it to the upper frame, followed by adding the supports to the front corners and middle, to keep the top frame from pulling off the wall from the weight of the lid or someone leaning on it. Now let’s hide that frame! We used a 3” wainscoting (bead board) in 36” X 32” sheets and 1” finishing nails to tack it to the frame. We put the first nail in a corner then leveled the sheet to the top of the frame and tacked the opposite corner. You want to make sure the sheet is level otherwise your box will look like it’s leaning. For the trim we used a 3” high trim with a square edge for a simple look and 2” finishing nails. Since it’s hiding in our pool house we just used butt joints but if it was somewhere we’re going to see it frequently we would have cut the joints on 45 degree angles to give it a cleaner look. After we had trimmed it out, we filled the gaps with caulking and gave it all a coat of white paint. The wainscoting and trim added almost ¾” to the frame, so it’s a good idea to wait until it’s assembled before cutting the piece for the lid. Attach the hinges to the lid then attach the hinges to the frame, then you're done! So while Ian did all the hard work, I was working on building the cabinets to go above the bench. We actually got a great deal on these. They are just simple laundry room cabinets that you can get at any hardware store, but we got them on sale last weekend at Canadian Tire for 40% off. So $39.99 seemed like a good deal to us. I put the cabinet together on our kitchen floor (which was actually a bit of a pain, since there really isn't a lot of space in there...) but it took me about 30 mins and I was done. Did you notice my floral hammer? It came as a part of a tool set. I found the set on clearance at HomeSense for like $7, and thought, what girl doesn't need her OWN tool set? Plus, its so obvious now which hammer is mine. Ian refuses to use them. I would like to say its because he thinks they're just too girly, but its actually because they PROBABLY aren't the best quality tools in the world. Whatevs. I say a hammer's a hammer! After I had my frame put together, I installed that onto the wall using wall plugs and screws. Then it was time to attach the doors. Ian snapped this pic of me as it seems I never have any pictures of me working on anything....hmmm. Honestly though, its not easy to take a photo of yourself painting a wall. That's my story and Im sticking to it. (p.s did you notice that I am actually IN the shed? That was a big step for me people...anywhere hornets live is not a place I want to be). Once the doors were up, we were almost finished! We just need to put a few hooks up on the walls for hanging, a few baskets in for towels and we are done! Me being picky, I also want to change all the handles on the cabinets to match....just for my own piece of mind people. I know its not a show room, but I will know. There isn't much we can do on the other side of the pool shed, since thats where all the "pool equipment" is, so its just this one side we had to work with and create a more organized space. So lets look at the before and afters (still in progress).... SO much better. Plus, the best part?! The hornets, wasps, bees, etc are ALL gone. I think I had Ian spray a full can of raid before I would even step foot in there, so we are all good to go :) We'll post a picture once its all done, but do you think Im crazy for wanting to put a BIT of decor in there? Something nautical themed?! What would you do?
