My buddy Colin commented on my pic of the Hotties that we’d obviously never finished the wood store that he helped us to start building in September last year. Well, this pic, although it’s no great photo, is to show him that we did, indeed, finish the wood store and it does have some wood in it. The photo was taken in a brief lull from the rain this morning. Have no fear, within an hour of the shot being taken it was completely hammering down again.

Colin is a true legend in my world. He’s always willing to spend a few days getting muddy and helping me to build stuff. In fact, I think he really enjoys it for two reasons, firstly because he gets to spend time outside doing something physical, which as we all know, is extremely good for the soul. Also, I think he quite likes spending “quality” time with me. In fact, both of these reasons for him helping me are why I ask him to help. I too love doing “stuff” outside and any reason for me to spend a week with Colin is also a great thing. I don’t know why but we simply work well together.

Last September, he came to spend a week here and during that time he built a patio/path with me, dug up a load of concrete paving slabs from a place in the garden where they were not needed and hauled them up to somewhere where I could use them for me. (Waste not, want not – any building materials that I can reclaim and reuse are always a good thing.) The last job he helped with was a three-way effort – DM was working while we did all of the rest but as this final job was at the weekend, all three of us did it. It was building the substructure for a log store.

We cut a load of timbers to length, Colin stripped off the bark, then we concreted them into the ground ready for the rest of the structure to be built when the concrete had had time to go off. See above!

In fact, dear Colin, it was finished the following weekend, when we reclaimed some other timbers to finish the frame (out of the old house roof), then added the battening and slates (also reclaimed from the old house roof) and finally clad the sides in waste timber from a sawmill. You should have seen me up the ladder, wellying copper nails through slates into the battens. I must say, the day we finished it was possibly the last day we saw sunshine here and it was glorious to work in the sun.

The bad thing is that although we’ve half-filled it with wood, it’s all damp because since then we’ve had no sunshine or warmth to dry it out. Hopefully we’ll get some decent weather soon and then it’ll dry and we can use it. It’s built so that the sun gets inside even in midwinter…..but for that to happen the sun has to show its face!

I will also post over the next few days/weeks the results of some of Colin’s other labours. He’ll also be pleased to see that I did put in the other path that I’d been “threatening” to do and it too (along with the one he helped to build) is fab.

Thanks Colin.