I is for Incredible!

November 9, 2023 /

Today’s post is a ‘guest post’. My sister Maya and her family built a garden house in their back yard in Portland a couple of years ago, and she posted about it recently on Facebook. I asked her if I could share her post here, because I am so amazingly impressed by the entire endeavor. That they did the work themselves, that they used mostly recycled materials, that it came out so beautifully. Truly incredible. I wish I had these powers, but alas, I do not. Without any further ado, here’s my sister’s post.

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The summer of 2021 a wish/dream of mine came true. The kids had long outgrown their play structure and soccer balls were no longer regularly flying around our back yard. We were home all summer with the pandemic still quite prominent. So we dismantled our play structure and built a garden house in its place using mostly recycled materials.

We used:

Materials we had on hand for building:

  • Pavers from old patio and bricks from old chimney, both removed at our house in past projects, and repurposed to build a foundation (and a small path and step to enter house)
  • Wood from the play structure that we built in 2007 and dismantled just before building the garden house
  • Outdoor siding from wood from a fence that was removed from one corner of our house
  • Some of the tin roof from our old play structure 
  • Tools in our garage – table saw, sander, hammers etc. 
  • Nails, screws, staples, wood filler

Things we picked up for free from our neighborhood buy nothing group:

  • Couch in excellent condition
  • 2 small rugs
  • Chair
  • Curtain rods and curtains
  • Small ceramic pots for plants
  • Throw pillow 
  • Battery operated lanterns
  • More wood (plywood & 4 x 4’s)
  • 2 1/2 sheets of dry wall
  • Wooden table

Things we collected from neighborhood free piles etc.:

  • 18 windows over the last several years (with the vision of a garden house one day)

Things we borrowed to assist in building:

  • Tools/small electric saws (mitre saw) from our local tool library 
  • Books on building a shed/small house from our neighborhood/county library
  • Air compressor for stapling in boards 

Things we bought:

  • Door, second hand from “Restore”
  • Door handle with key and dead bolt lock with key, each $2 from thrift shop
  • String of solar powered lights to light house without electricity (on sale at Costco)
  • Water proof laminate flooring (on sale at Costco)
  • Paint (some bought from the returned “mismatch” cans that are available at the store for a big discount)

It’s been great to have just a little more space any of us could use at any moment to spread out, as we suddenly had four adult sized people living in our small house in the midst of a pandemic. And even now when we are no longer home so much of the time – a good spot to read a book, drink a cup of tea or watch and listen to the birds out the windows all seasons – it’s just as I had hoped.

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