The Finished New Shed

So the contractor is done, and the new shed has siding, a roof, trim, and a door.  As this first picture shows, the majority of the walls are well hidden behind the retaining wall when viewed from the street.  I am particularly pleased that the Bay is still visible behind it.

While walking around the labyrinth, the shed is tucked behind the bush clover, and we expect to add more plantings along this side to further distract the eye from it.  Actually it does even more, since it is hiding all of the utility area on that side of the house, including the propane tank, compressor, electric meter, and septic tank cover.  While I don't particularly like the trim color on the house, which is a faded red color, they did a very good job matching it so that the visually fits into the same appearance.

The flower beds in the labyrinth area are slightly past their fall peak. We have begun trimming out the dying brown leaves and tops as the perennials pull back for winter.  The photo from this spot looks more like a jumble of plants, since only small sections of the grass path are visible.  I will show more of this with the next blog post.

Walking further back into the yard, the front of the shed becomes visible, along with the utility area.  There are a number of things we need to do, like putting blocks inside the front edge, so we can fill in the soil up to the edge of the shed.  We want to keep the soil out of contact with it to avoid rot.  The wood beams supporting the shed are laid on concrete blocks to keep them above the ground.  I am not sure what options there would be to prevent termites from climbing around them.  On the left side we also need to dig more soil out and put in a low retaining wall to keep the soil away from the side.  Of course, we now want to put in a nice, secret shade garden into the utility area, which is visible from the sun porch and kitchen sink.

Stepping further back, and looking up the hill, the shed now plays a very effective role of providing one of the most private areas of the yard.  The only other equivalent area is the North Garden, which I also consider a secret garden, since only one neighbor has windows overlooking it. This is much better since it has the view out toward the bay, shade from the crape myrtle tree in the morning, along with the nice sense of separation and enclosure from the shed.  Maybe we could put in a small patio area, which would double as a shed work surface?