What I Thought I Wanted

June 28, 2025

I have this sweet little shed in my back yard. It only has three sides so it’s probably not technically a shed. I suppose it’s more of a shelter. I love that little thing. When I moved in, the part of the roof that overhangs the opening was rotten and that was quite a few years ago now. The other thing about the shed is that the corner on the overhang is a bit low. I can walk under it without bending down but I probably have a millimetre to spare. Everyone else gets the corner off the head. It’s unpleasant.

With Matt’s help, I also put in a raised platform to hold all of my winter wood on the driveway side of the shelter. Using a platform requires me to put a tarp over the pile every year. I hate using a plastic tarp that shreds itself every year. It means that every year I’m throwing a giant pile of plastic into the garbage only to replace it with another pile of plastic destined to endure the same fate.

Then I thought, what if I build a shelter over the wood pile? I could incorporate the tool shed into the design of the woodshed. I could change the angle of the roof to match to roof on the wood shelter which would get rid of the ducking problem and also replace the rotten roof with a nice fresh one. So I did up a drawing.

I was really happy with it. I thought the design looked good. Since it solved all of my problems, I set about determining the cost of the undertaking. The short answer: expensive! It felt like a lot of money just to keep my wood dry and a few heads from getting a bump. Then came the logistics of repositioning the platform to be perfectly in line with the shed so that the two parts could function as a unit. It was doable but it involved the use of jacks and a willingness to work through a lot of unforseen issues. It all started to feel like a lot. I had been uneasy about the project from the start. I thought that my anxiety stemmed from the scope of the project. But after breaking the whole project down into workable parts, I was still uneasy. I dug a little deeper and realized that what was really on my mind was that I didn’t want a gigantic, semi-permanent structure taking up so much visual space in my driveway. And that was that. That was the end of the project. I’m so glad I realized that before spending a penny.

This is the new game plan. I’ll replace the roof on the shed and that will fix the rot. The overhanging joists will get about six inches cut off which will get rid of more rot and create a few more millimetres of room for people hoping not to hit their heads. I’ll finish painting it and I’ll organize it so that everything has a place instead of just being shoved in there. And I’ll buy a good quality canvas tarp to put over my wood pile. It should last more than a year and when it does get holes, I’ll hopefully be able to patch them. In the end, when the tarp finally packs it in, it will decompose instead of being a forever-piece-of-plastic-garbage. At least that’s the hope.