Chapter 17: Walls. What are they good for?
Kitchen on a flat surface!
After John, the master erector left, we were able to finish the frame and start sheeting. A working bee was organised - Ray and Ceccy, Jackson and his partner Erin, all came over to help get the outside sheeted and the roller doors up. Oh, those roller doors! God, they were heavy, but we would only have to do it once, right? They took up the entire south wall of the shed and afforded a wonderful view when they were open and given it was Summer, they were open pretty much all of the time.
We kept the tents for sleeping in, but moved the kitchen over, piece by piece across the bumpy ground on a trolley. So, so good to have a level surface for the benches, tables and pantry and room to move around. We gave Helen back her Weber and bought our own, a Family Q, big enough to feed a crowd and effective as an oven and smoker. We also brought the concrete BBQ over, block by block in a wheelbarrow, and made a fire pit on the northeast corner of the pad. Now we could connect the guttering from the shed to catch every drop of rain and dew in our tank and until we sorted out the plumbing, Smash suspended the 25-litre water container above the sink again, on a rope thrown over one of the portals. I put the sink under the window that looked out east to the granite and sighed with deep happiness at this milestone.
There was a lot of work still to do, but having that roof made all the difference. Now we could decide where to put the internal wall.
Smash and I rarely agree on anything, other than the important things, like love, food and politics. For everything else, we have the opposite view – it’s like a reflex. For instance, I just read that line out to him, and he said, ‘That’s not true’. When it came to deciding where the wall should go, I thought we should get on the same page. Nothing irritates a builder more than a couple who have conflicting views on site. (I found this factoid out whilst eavesdropping on Smoko one time while our house in Brisbane was being renovated.) It is time wasting and boring and puts the builder or tradesperson in an awkward position. Whose side do they take? Turns out – neither. They don’t care whether you want the wall here or there, they just want to build the bloody thing.
So, with this in mind, we sat down at my computer and looked at the shed design I’d done up in Illustrator. Smash peered at the screen and made a popping noise with his lips. ‘The tractor should go inside. I don’t want it out in the elements.’
This was the first I’d heard of ‘The Tractor’. Of course, he’d talked about wanting to get ‘A Tractor’, but I’d thought that was like me talking about wanting a horse: a dream that was unlikely to be fulfilled any time soon, if ever, but fun to talk about nonetheless. In Brisbane, on Saturday mornings, we’d sit up in bed with our cups of tea and laptops - Smash scrolling through farm machinery sites, me on Gumtree looking at horses.
Smash: ‘Ohhhh, my god! Look at this one!’
Me: (Without looking away from my screen.) ‘Verrrrry nice.’
And vice versa.
I decided to avoid the tractor issue for now, and made a vague comment about maybe getting a carport at some point, to protect his non-existent tractor from the elements. We got back to the design. Smash wanted to have a tool room, a workshop where he could hang out with his mates and smoke, a place to put his postie bikes, room for the trailer and all the other stuff he’d managed to accumulate – and there was Pop’s bench. I wanted a lovely, open plan living area with heaps of couches, an island kitchen bench and room for a long dining table. When I added up all these shapes on Illustrator, there did not seem to be enough room for them all. Oh, and the beds would have to go somewhere too - it wasn’t like we were going to keep sleeping in the tents. Was it? (Weak laughter.)
So, with all this equipment needing to be fitted in to the shed, we realised we would either have to live more simply and with less possessions, (see previous blog post for unlikeliness of this) or make the garage end bigger. There was a bit of a stand-off. Now it seems ludicrous that we thought we could fit everything in to the one shed – I remember Helen laughing at my design and asking if we were going to have the Nissan in the bedroom. Again: long term planning has never been our strong suit.
Once we started spending time in the shed, I was even less inclined to add an internal wall. The open space was liberating – high ceiling, lots of windows, and with the roller doors up and the fire pit just outside, it felt like camping. We put the bed next to the roller doors and at night, lay under the indigo blanket of sky, making feeble attempts at constellation naming. And the breeze – so good in those hotter months and in the day, so strong it took the flies away with it. In the mornings, birds flew through, stopped for a moment on one of the portals, had a bit of a chat, (probably a bit of a shit) then took off again. From anywhere in the shed, we could have a view of the bush (admittedly, also the long-drop, the dirt left by earthworks, and the water tank but I planned on planting shrubbery there to conceal it). If we put a wall in, it would box the space in, make it seem like a house in the suburbs – or a garage.
We compromised. Every time we packed up to go back to Brisbane, we brought in all the gear: the postie bikes, my pushbike, the Weber, the generator, the compressor, petrol containers, gas bottles, mower, power leads, the garden tools and wheelbarrow. I could go on. The only thing left outside was the outdoor setting and all the corrugated sheets and top hat we hadn’t used for the internal wall. It took us hours to pack up. If Smash had to be back at work by 10AM on a Monday, we’d get up at 6AM and still not be back in Brisbane until 2PM. He spent most of the drive on his phone and laptop, pretending he was in his office. Then when we went back down to Nundub, the whole process would be repeated in reverse (and the smell of diesel and petrol lingered for the duration of our stay).
That’s okay, we told ourselves. We were in the bush, relaxing, having an awesome time. Who cared how long it took to settle in? We had all the time in the world.
Inevitably, we wanted to be spending all the time in the world doing funner things than moving postie bikes in and out of the shed and cleaning up oil spills. So then we decided to pack it all up on the western side of the shed, out of sight, covered with Don’s ginormous tarp – a 6 cubic metre, silver grey blob, tightly secured with octopus straps and rope to stop the tarp from getting ripped by the strong wind that blew down the side. Only problem being, if we wanted to go for a ride on the postie bikes, or use the wheelbarrow, it took about two hours to get them out, so we tended to just not. The blob just sat there until we really needed something, that was, without fail, always at the centre of the pile. It seemed we were spending a lot of time moving shit around, trying to find stuff, packing away stuff. I so badly wanted to live more simply, but I also liked being able to have a turn on the mower when the fancy took me. Therein lies the first world problem of the century and the reason garden sheds are a thing.
By now, Smash was on board with the whole, no interior walls idea. We’d had a few gatherings and the free flow through from outdoors to inside added to the conviviality – plenty of room for everyone, no segregation between fire staring smokers and food preparing drinkers. For sure, we had to make sure there were no undies lying around, and remember to stash the haemorrhoid cream, but it was worth it to have the space. Life was good.
As for all the stuff that couldn’t fit in the shed, it stayed under Don’s tarp for months until we cracked, and decided we needed a garage – or Smash’s Shed, as he took to calling it.
Lying in bed in the morning, thinking about stuff.
