Luck was on our side when buying our new build house, as the plot came with an additional garden space around the side of our house. Although we appreciated the extra garden space, this out of sight, out of mind spot quickly became a dumping ground for bikes, kids outdoor toys and unsightly garden bits like wheelbarrows and bulky 15 litre bags of compost. There was also a big mound of soil, caused from the aftermath of seeding our own lawn and extending our patio. Nature thrived and soon took over our side garden, transforming this area into an unmanageable jungle of rapidly growing weeds and yellow-flowered rapeseed that seemed to return night after night, just like the moon.
Our side garden is a good size too, not a pokey narrow slice of land that’s too slim to make any real use of. So we began thinking of how we could make this area have a purpose in life. Originally we thought about a cosy seating area beneath a zig-zag of glowing festoon lights, or a cool outdoor kitchen to host mouthwatering bbq’s for family and friends in the summer. Admittedly, In the end, we decided on a far less exciting option of garden storage. But who doesn’t love a bit of extra storage space?
Let’s be honest, sheds aren’t the prettiest structures to admire in your garden (not the plain budget looking ones anyway) Sure, we can paint them and pretty them up somewhat, but at the end of the day, it’s still a wooden shed. So nestling one away at the back of this side section of garden just made sense. It was out of sight, and hidden from all angles of the main garden space.
With our fairly tight makeover budget set, here’s what we did to transform this wasted side garden into something tidy, low maintenance and most importantly – practical.

In this article...
Sorting out our weedy garden
How can it be so hard to nurture and grow a beautiful flower, yet without any human assistance weeds attempt a head-to-head race with bamboo. Ok, weeds aren’t on quite the same growth rate as bamboo, but they can still shoot up a good couple inches per day.
We would weed this entire area, yet by the following weekend nature had magically knitted itself another thick green blanket, undoing all of our hard work once again. It wasn’t a game that we enjoyed playing, so for the final time we pulled out as many rapeseed plants and weeds as possible by hand. The spiky leaves occasionally pricking my skin through my cheap pair of gardening gloves, and the odd worm tangled among the roots as we tugged the plants from the ground. Step one was now complete and we were left with a weedless, muddy patch of land.

Levelling the garden by hand
To give a bit of a background story; to save money when buying our home we opted out of paying for turf. The building company wanted to charge us the best part of £900 to have our garden turfed (who knew that turf isn’t included within the purchase price?) Which meant when we moved in, and for a chunk of time after, our garden was just a brown lumpy mud pit.
Our plan was to move in and seed the lawn ourselves, which is exactly what we did. You can read about how we saved £700 by doing this ourselves in this blog post if you’re interested. In doing so, we had to prepare the ground first by removing the huge rocks and levelling it out. We also extended the tiny patio to make it full width, which too resulted in excess soil. We didn’t have a skip for either of those projects, so we dumped the soil and rocks on the side garden (which we never seeded) Where it sat waiting to be a future James and Heidi problem.
Double handling isn’t ever ideal, but at the time of doing those other garden projects we couldn’t afford a skip, so it was left as a muddy mound around the side. Thankfully, this time we had a skip and it was time to get rid of this eyesore at last. November rolled around and the cold ground was rock solid making digging this back up challenging. It was back breaking work. The ground was so solid that I couldn’t get the spade to slice into it, even if I jumped all my weight onto it, it barely made a scratch. Which meant I quickly handed this task over to James, who managed to shovel the soil into the wheelbarrow, and I tipped the half loaded barrows into the skip before they became too heavy to lift. Team work at its finest. By the time we had finished we’d filled an entire skip 2.5 times, and gained some rough looking blisters on our palms in the process.

Once the bulk of the extra soil was gone, it was time to tackle levelling out the ground because it was on a serious wonk. To correct the slope, we used a mixture of shovelling and raking until we had moved enough soil around for it to look somewhat level. We didn’t worry about getting it completely perfect, just something that looked suitable to put a shed on. Then we chucked a little bit of sub base down, but only where the path was going to be and where the shed was going to sit. I don’t think that step was overly necessary, but it helped to make it all a little less likely to sink or move over time.

Building a base for the shed
You don’t have to use a shed base, but if you just plonk it straight onto the ground or straight onto the gravel, rain is likely to pool and trap the water. Eventually causing your wooden shed to slowly rot away, which isn’t what you want. Especially since discovering how much sheds cost. I was completely naive to how expensive an 8×6 foot shed was until we started looking to buy one, and let me just tell you; my research concluded that they are not cheap! Even the flimsy nasty ones will still set you back a few hundreds of pounds.
We bought this shed on Amazon which cost us £409 at the time. I’s fine for what it is, but i’m certain it won’t stand the test of time. The wooden panels aren’t the strongest and it all just feels quite flimsy. Had we of been a little more time rich, I think we could have built something far more sturdy with £400 worth of materials.
Some people place their sheds on a concrete base or some patio slabs, but we went for an actual shed base. Which is like a strong plastic mesh that you infill with gravel to hold it in place. similar to what you sometimes see at gravel car parks or gravel pathways as it stops all the stones from disappearing.
This wasn’t overly expensive, and it was super easy to position and fill. We laid it on-top of the sub base and there was no need to dig or cement it in. By the time we filled all the cubes with gravel it wasn’t budging one bit.

Creating a stepping stone path
Bradfords must offer some top tier discount to the home development firms, as all new-build estates seem to come with the exact same patio slabs. These creamy-yellow wash slabs aren’t our favourite, and it’s not what we would pick if given the choice. But, unable to afford replacing our entire garden patio and path, we pretty much had to stick with them in order to keep the garden feeling cohesive.
Because the slabs are fairly small squares, and our patio and path are rectangular. I felt like we had too many harsh square shapes going on, and I wanted to introduce some softer curves to the garden. Which is why we chose to do our path as stepping stones that curved around the corner, rather than a solid L shape path.
James figured out the spacing between each stone so that the curve and steps were easy to walk along and then fixed them down with a solid base of cement. We used the Blue Circle cement and it was easy to mix and use.

Laying down garden weed membrane
Seeing as the weeds had the most perfect growing conditions and thrived in this area, we didn’t want to risk them sprouting back up. In a bid to try and avoid them coming through we laid some garden weed membrane down.
There are a few different variety’s of this stuff, and some are more expensive than others. The cheaper options are usually a very thin fabric which easily tears. Whilst the more premium versions are strong and thick, like a durable woven plastic fabric. It’s obviously up to you which one you go for, and how much money your budget allows you to spend on this step. However, I will say we used this thicker stuff and I think I’ve only had to pluck 3 or 4 weeds out of this area over the last couple years. For that, I would say it’s worth getting the better one.
This step is super simple, unless you’re doing it on a windy day where your weed membrane insists on taking flight and becoming a kite. We rolled it out and fixed it down onto the ground using plastic pegs (which weren’t the best) so we bought these metal U shape hooks and switched them out. The metal pegs were easier to use and held the sheeting down neater, so I recommend getting yourself some.
For some reason we did this after putting down the base and path, so we had to cut around it. But you could do this step first if thats easier!

Adding some low maintenance gravel
Another new-build house classic is this colour of gravel. Again, it’s probably not what we would choose, but as we had it in other areas and its also the most affordable, we stuck with it. I certainly don’t think it’s the worst gravel on the market, but I do think there are prettier options out there if you have a bigger budget.
For this area we ordered in a 1 ton dumpy bag of the stuff, and spread it out over the weed membrane in a nice thick layer, making sure there were no gaps. By this point, things were seriously taking shape and the mud-pit-weed-jungle felt like a distant memory.

Building the shed and attaching the felt roof
The instructions for this shed were vaguer than an IKEA building guide, so we just had to figure it out as we went along. If you’re ok with puzzles, then I’m confident you would know which piece went where.
To make our life easier, we painted the back and both side panels before starting to fix it together. Otherwise I would’ve needed to be Elastigirl to reach it. Because we didn’t have much spare room to work, we also fixed the four walls together first, and then lifted it onto the shed base to install it to the floor piece.

Then we attached the roof beams, roof boards and nailed in the felt roof. The tight workspace made this tricky to do, causing James to sit on the roof and even straddle the fence panels at times to try and reach, which was great at providing plenty of free entertainment to myself and our neighbours. Also doing this in the winter, meant the sun went to bed a smidge too early and we were left trying to finish the roof in the dimpsy light.

Painting the shed in Ronseal Fence Life Plus
To keep costs down, we painted our shed using the left over paint from when we painted our fence panels. It’s called Warm Stone by Ronseal and it’s a grey with a slight brown undertone, although I would say it becomes more grey on the second coat. To get the job done, I used a regular 4 inch paint brush as I found the chunky fence painting brush a little too bulky and awkward to use.
We have been impressed with this paints longevity so far. It’s been up for a couple years now, been subjected to sun, snow, wind and rain. Yet it still doesn’t look in need of any touch ups which is fantastic. It’s also pretty affordable, I bought a 5 litre tub for around £15.

Adding motion lighting and a combination lock
Once the shed was built, we added a 5-code Squire combination lock for an added bit of security, along with a motion detective solar light which have been ace. A lot of solar lights throw in the towel after a year of being out in the elements. They seem to fill up with water, mist up with condensation or just stop charging altogether. But these solar lights have been faultless, even during the darker winter months they have still had enough light to charge them up and power on, they are really bright too! We have a few of them around the garden.
Originally we installed it onto the apex of the shed roof, but we moved it onto the fence panel instead, as it helped to flood this entire side garden with light, which is so handy and had made a brilliant addition to this part of the garden.

Conclusion
Although it’s not the most exciting makeover, this has been such a great transformation to our outdoor space. Its turned this wasted weed-infested side garden into such a usable and practical space, and we love how low maintenance it is. 2 years on and our shed is still going strong (apart from the door has dropped a bit) but we’ve not had any leaks and the solar light is still working perfectly too. Overall, we spent around £700, which is a small amount for how much its improved this area.
I think this year I would like to add a few colourful plant pots and flowers, and place them in the corner. Just to pretty it up a bit more and inject some colour as you walk past. We might even build our own little herb garden to live around here too!
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