Garden shed excitement shows how lockdown has changed my outlook on life: Catherine Scott
We are about to take the plunge. With foreign holidays looking increasingly unlikely and more time spent in the garden we have decided to make a very exciting purchase – a garden shed.
It might not excite everyone but I have been hankering after a garden shed for years. Mainly so that our hallway can stop looking like a student flat and at last the bikes will find a new home and our conservatory will stop looking like a junk yard – well that’s the plan.
I did plan to make the purchase last summer but the pandemic seemed to have created not only a shortage of garden furniture but also sheds. It might have been that people needed somewhere to store the tonne of toilet roll they were hoarding.
Anyway I am determined that this year it will be a goer. But it’s not as easy as you may think.
Once you’ve decided where the new building will go, there’s the size, the shape, the windows, the doors and the locks.
It’s not a decision to be taken lightly and even involved a weekend trip to a timber merchants to look at sheds.
What has my life come to? I blame lockdown and not spending enough time with other people.
We even ended up with a shed brochure – who would have thought there were so many options? My daughter took one look and declared it wasn’t nearly as interesting as the Barker and Stonehouse brochure – I have to agree with her there. But there are people for whom a shed is much more than just a place to keep the lawn mower.
A yoga studio, a tiki bar and an NHS worker’s haven are among the sheds entered in the 2021 Cuprinol Shed of the Year competition.
Entries close on April 12 but I don’t think we will have taken delivery of our shed by then, let along had time to customise it, as it takes eight weeks to arrive.
With the coronavirus pandemic keeping people at home for a year, the nation’s sheds have become increasingly important. Nowhere is this more evident than in a yoga cabin, built by Geraint Nicholas, from Essex, for his wife. The yoga shed also acts as a cinema and party room, with a lighting setup to match.
Adam Bell from South US does woodwork in his cabin, which also features a whiskey cabinet.
A tiki bar in the West Midlands and a Peaky Blinders-themed shed on Merseyside demonstrate the breadth of sheds that have so far been entered. I will be happy for our shed just to be a shed, although now that lockdown restrictions are easing from this week and we are able to see six friends outside, maybe it could double up as a pub.
