The aforementioned freshly-built woodshed. Apart from the three old pallets that serve as floor, this is made completely from lumber that I made myself, from trees that needed to be taken down because of bark bettles.

Not sure yet, if it will get plainted in the same Falu red as the house, or allowed to grey on its own.

I think my first outside project for the spring and summer is taking shape in my head: a shed extension to move the home brewery out of the kitchen and wardrobe.

The first step is, as so often, to make thing worse, before they bet better. Yesterday I tore down the the small firewood shed (before-picture) after having emptied it in recently.

The area there measures about 3 by 4 metres which should be plenty for my rather modest brewing equipment, even if I decide to expand it somewhat.

But first I'll have to finish the removal of large rocks that are in the way. I started this more than a year ago, but granite is hard and heavy, slowing down the drilling and driving of wedges. Lifting the remaining pieces out of the way is good deadlift exercise though!

My tool shed and workshop is rather narrow, so when I borrowed my neighbour's table saw the other day, the first thing I did was to build a cart on wheels/castors for it, to be able to rasily move it out of the way. At the same time I made my workbench mobile the same way and ensured that the height of the two matched, so that the bench can serve as an outfeed-table for long pieces from the saw.

This Video served as the main inspiration for the cart, but I simplified it even more and skipped the drawers for a plain storage shelf underneath the saw. I can recommend Steve Ramsey's Youtube channel throughout; I have watched quite a few of his videos and found them both instructive and entertaining.

Ever since we moved into our cottage in the forest, there was a small wodden deck in front of the rock wall that limits the property. It is a sunny spot and the rock stores some warmth, so we naturally like to hang out in the garden furniture there. Unfortunately, the deck itself had rotted so much by now that one started to step through the boards.

I had put a temporary fix in place and thought I'd do the proper renovation early next year. But in a bout of restlessness I tore it all down the other week and started over from scratch. And I mean from scratch, starting by cutting some timber into beams and boards. This a manual process using the chainsaw and some improvised rigs to ensure straight cuts.

Having good foundations is imporant, even for such simple construnctions as a 4.5x3m deck. So I put some heavy granite stones into the corners, drilled holes and glued in some hardware with anchoring adhesive. In one corner the rock wall itself stuck out underneath, so could drill straight into the rock - this thing is going nowhere!

Then I put together the frame and oiled it with a traditional mix of tar and linseed oil. In the picture you can see that I had to put in four additional trusses (the yet unpainted ones) because I originally had far too large spacing.

Even though the surface is not very large, cutting all the boards out of tree trunks and straightening the edges with a circular saw took quite a while. Once I had screwed them on, I did not have the energy to think of any advanced stair construction, so it turned out as simple as possible. Still, I am quite happy with how the whole thing turned out:

I recycled the old railing which was in ok shape, just painted it and screwed it onto some feet, so it will be easily replaced, if needed.

One of the things I dedicated my time to during this summer of isolation was building a small wind shelter in the forest:

It is made from lumber that I cut myself out of trees that were blown down during the winter. From the same material I also built a garden shed and renovated the deck at home.