Shed saga, or, All in a morning’s work

So last week I had the concept of how to load the shed in the van; this weekend is the story of how it actually got done.

First, I needed to put stuff under the bookcase, so it would be supported to hold a load on top of it, and so I wouldn’t be wasting all that space.  This was a mini-saga of its own, but I’ll cut it short.

It first required getting some more boxes packed, so I got out some old boxes and packed some more books.

Those banana boxes have been stacked in my utility room, waiting for my next move, ever since I moved into this house.  I’ve had them since college.  They’ve probably been with me through 20 or so moves, counting all the moving I did while in college.  So there was a feeling of nostagia as I pulled them out for yet another move.

Got them packed, and laid things out next to the bookcase, ready for it to be fitted over the top.

It was a bit of a struggle, and in the end the sleeping bag didn’t make it under, but I finally succeeded.

Nice, almost-level platform ready to receive the shed.  Now I just had to get it there.  It’s not super-heavy, just large and awkward.  Last night, I got it from here

to there.

See, back there just past the tree?  You can see where it started over there on the right.

Figuring out how to get that ginormous (relatively speaking) thing past the tree was my first big challenge.  Got it balanced, more or less, on the hand truck, and with pushing, pulling, and crawling, mostly down on my knees pushing, got it just past the tree.

So I got it raised up, and tried to pull it –and it fell off.  The ground was just too hillocky for me to control it.  I tried twice, and it fell twice.  It’s fairly sturdy, but even I could realize that it wouldn’t stand up to much more of that.  I walked around and stared at it a bit, but decided to sleep on it.  Here it lay overnight.

So this morning, I enlisted both my hand truck thingies, and tied it on the blue one

and laid it down so it rested on the yellow one,

and pushing and pulling (mostly on my knees again) got it out to the gate.

 

 

Where, of course, I had to figure out what to do next.  It wasn’t going through that gate laid flat like that.  So I went in and did some more grading.

My next break, I went out, stood it up, put it sideways to the gate,

and carted the hand truck around to the front and got it under the shed.

I was starting to feel pretty good at this point–the goal was in sight (shed on left, van in street on the right)

Pulled it through and unloaded it from the hand truck, laid it down flat so the wind wouldn’t blow it over,

and went back in to do some more grading.

An hour or so later, cam back out, loaded it onto the handtrucks

and pushed (on my knees again–definitely the best way)

and pulled, until I got it out to the driveway, from whence I had removed the car.

This felt like a landmark, and a bit of strategizing about how to keep it from running away when it hit that nice smooth concrete was called for, so I went in and finished grading that lesson plan, and had lunch.

Sure enough, it was a piece of cake from there to here

At which point, the hand trucks had done their job, so I just manhandled it to here.

Next challenge: actually getting it into the van.  Used my little table as a staging platform:

And then up onto the edge of the van floor, removing the table in the process

And another pause to contemplate the situation:

The issue at this point was how to get it up on my bookcase-and-boxes platform:

 

I had just decided I should have inserted it top-first, so I could set it up, move it in, and lay it down where I wanted it, and was trying to decide if it was worth removing it and starting over again, when my neighbor drove up and offered to help.  Et voilá!  With two of us, it was no challenge at all:

Here it is again, from the side door

My question now is, which impresses you more with its size–the shed, or the van?

Anyway, it’s in, and ready to accept more cargo.  A ton of stuff will fit in there–

I have no idea what I’ll take.  I don’t want it to be too heavy, so more books are out.  But I have a couple of weeks to work on that.  I feel like the hardest part is done.