Boat Shed Makeover
/Time to overhaul this fugly little boat shed!
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice little shed. It’s just ugly. The color is awful, the roof needs new shingles, it smells like boat shed, and the doors don’t exactly close. It’s full of various types of wasp nests, spiders and other creepy-crawlies, but has a ton of potential.
See the weird brown areas on the photo above? Yeah. There was an old plastic thermometer hanging from a screw by the front door, and whoever painted it this heinous green color PAINTED AROUND IT. It was literally just hanging on a screw, for fuck’s sake. Same with the side - the brown spot there was where the pier number was hanging. Again, from a screw. Not “installed” like it would take a lot of effort to take it down for painting. Oh and some of the mud wasp nests on the exterior? They were painted over too. What the actual fuck…until I got to talking to my neighbor, the realtor…she did it. Then I felt bad because she’s a super nice lady. I’ll give her this one because she did it on her dime and her time after the original owners walked away and left it for foreclosure. I’m so judgy!
Cleanup
First things first, had to clean this baby out. There were some old, rusty metal shelving units that I removed, along with some other miscellaneous things that were left from the prior owner, all went in the trash. There was also a ridiculous amount of screws randomly protruding everywhere, I can only assume they functioned as hangers for tools and other items. Of course, there was a mixture of phillips, star and square heads so that was fun to play “find the right drill bit” to get them all out. There were some metal rods used to hang things, so I pulled those out, as well as some high shelves that would serve no use to me because they were too high for me to reach. I scraped off the wasp nests (most were mud) and pressure washed the floor and exterior.
Windows & Doors
Not only does this little shed have two doors and two windows, it also has power! There are flood lights on the outside, lights on the inside, and outlets galore. It even has a 220 outlet (which I have no use for, but the guy who built it needed 220 for his business, so here we are).
Elder Brady Boy works construction, so he was an invaluable resource to help me figure out what would be needed to give this thing a facelift. I got some replacement single-hung windows and two replacement doors from Menard’s. He got to work knocking out the old doors and windows. The windows and one of the doors were a tight fit, he could barely fit shims in there.
The one structural modification that had to be made was on the side door. The original door was a crazy size (like 47” wide) and I couldn’t find anything of that size in a prehung unit, so we decided to go with a 36” door and he modified the framing to accommodate the smaller door.
Paint
I painted the trim and fascia a bright white, some of which might be replaced when we get around to re-shingling the roof, but it brings a little “pop” to the shed and gives it some better definition.
Once the trim was painted, I moved on to painting the faux board & batten in a dark gray that will match the house color (when it gets painted sometime this summer).
Interior
I wanted to paint the interior studs & plywood white but really just didn’t have it in me. That may be something I do later, but for now, it was mostly about getting the exterior taken care of. Because I like things to all be in their place, I mapped out what I intended to store in this little shed - skis, wakeboard, tubes, life jackets, miscellaneous “boat stuff,” and in the winter, the pedal boat should fit.
I plan to better organize the interior at some point. I plan to make shelves and whatnot to store everything in its own place so it stays tidy and organized. It’s on the list. That list is long…
When it was all said and done, I had a decent pile of shit (old doors, windows, wood, etc.) and I really had zero appetite to carry all that shit up to the road for bulk trash pickup, so I whipped out my phone and booked an appointment with 1-800-GOT-JUNK for the next day and they made quick work of getting rid of all that crap for me! Really can’t say enough about them, I’ve used them a couple times now and their employees are really wonderful. Yes, there’s a cost (based on how much of their truck you fill up), but to me it was 100% worth it.
