Preparing for Summer Part 1

Summer is knocking on the door. I realised this as the first of this year's big fat shit-flies just flew in to my office and buzzed about, banging relentlessly in to my window until I rolled up a bit of paper and whacked it to death. It got in threw my the back door, which I've had open all day to let the house breath — another sign of summer being here.

Anyway, this year I've preempted summer and got a few jobs out of the way that needed doing in order to make the most of the hot weather. The first thing was to erect the gazebo we bought at the last summer and which has been stored in the garage since.

We bought this gazebo from The Garden Factory in the middle of last summer. However, after many delays and phone calls it didn't actually arrive until the end of summer. Hence there was little point erecting it then.

When we did get round to erecting we found the instructions were useless and almost impossible to read. Also, the srcews supplied were plentiful but all of one size and often way too big for the job.

Despite all this I am actually really happy with the finished thing. At 600 quid you'd be hard pushed to get anything cheaper.

Here's it is. It's situated at the bottom of our garden.

When we moved in this was the site of a compost heap and wasn't really somewhere we ventured. Now we have a reason to we'll be able to make more of this area. It's actually quite peaceful down there as it's close to where the Ouse Dyke passes us (our land boundary and garden shape is defined by its curving flow) and we can hear it trickle by.

Here's how it appears from my office, which is upstairs indoors.

Initially I'd thought I would need to prepare a substantial base (nothing was mentioned about this in the instructions) for it, but we opted to simply rest it all on bricks, as below.

All in all I'm happy with the end results, despite the initial problems. If you decide to buy from Cannock Gates/Garden Factory be warned -- it might take some time to arrive.

So, here's to summer. We've since added a table and four chairs so we can eat down there. I'm in the process of setting up WiFi access so I can "work" down there and all we need then is to run some lecky down the path somehow.

Comments

[Jerry Carter]

Hey Jake,

re: bricks - probably ok for this year, but take your level back out next spring. Freeze / thaw may shift them a bit along with your gazebo. It might not make a huge difference initially, but over time uneven support can stress the structure which might introduce some gaps and warping.

re: lecky to the gazebo... get a fair length of this and run a GFI cicuit (we call them Ground Fault Interupt here, not suret he equivalent there).
http://www.screwfix.com/app/sfd/cat/cat.jsp?cId=A331822&ts=02128
(flexible crush resistant conduit)

Get enough length to burry it below frost depth, and follow the path of least upset to excavate. If you can find one with a rubber sleeve, you can get away with just burrying it 6" or so.

Have fun!