Backyard Shed

Six years ago, when Craig and I were house hunting, we looked at a lot of fixer-uppers. And when we came across our current house, I knew I could fix it.  I'm not sure if Craig could see as much potential, but I knew it could be beautiful.   And we have been working on this house ever since.  There were many ugly quirky things we needed to address.  But the strangest part of the house was definitely this:

This is the backyard "fountain".  It is a two-tiered blue concrete structure.  And on the left is a red fire hydrant.  The water would be pumped out of the hydrant for a soothing water feature I guess.  And the previous owner left us the pump for this fountain in the garage - you know, just in case we wanted to hook it up again.  Um, no thanks.  We knew it would be a lot of work to rip out, so it wasn't one of our first projects.  But when we were having the new patio area dug out, we asked it they would drive the bob-cat back here and remove this too.  And they were willing (probably out of sympathy).  We have a good friend who is a fire fighter and he wanted the hydrant - nice to see that re-purposed.  Then, Craig and I got to work digging out the railroad ties, leveling the area, and making way for a shed:

Much better!  We purchased this shed locally and had it installed.  Although the walls were pre-finished, I painted the trim.  I also used some old flagstone as a border and planted a few bushes.  Having trouble seeing the bushes?  That's because the deer ate them last winter:

And the other side of the shed had become a little overgrown:

I went to Lowe's and bought a couple new bushes:

Craig dug up the old bushes and planted these.  Then, I weeded the area and spread mulch:

And I did the same on the other side:

So now the shed is looking a lot better:

I still want to paint the doors - that white has to go.  Hopefully, I'll get to that in the next couple of days so I can check this project off!