G Gauge - Enchanted Garden Railway

[royjess]

I've just posted some pics on the previous page.

Hanging the home made jam jar lanterns from some Sheppard's hooks

IMG_3617 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

IMG_3640 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

IMG_3616 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

IMG_3615 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

Here is a video of our garden taken a few weeks ago, by adding some enchanting music in the background really adds to the atmosphere



Here is the illuminations by night

[Morris]

Enjoyed that Roy! However, I made the mistake of showing it to SWMBO....I'm being told I could do that in ours....

[royjess]

I'm glad that you and SWMBO... are enjoying our garden if there anything you would like to know more about or what products we used or how we achieved certain things? Just ask

[royjess]

Our garden was beginning to look lovely, the rest of our new ornate plants had started to flower until a couple of weeks a go we had that very heavy down pour of rain which our garden ended up looking like a large lake. The following week was followed by very strong winds.

Most of the garden and our railway survived, but unfortunately I lost a few of our plants that we planted just before the summer, these hadn't had the chance to establish and decided to die off soon after the extreme weather. I'm planning to replace these next year by growing them from seeds.

The inside of our locomotive weather proof electrical boxes remain completely dry and unaffected, they did their job in protecting the electrics from the weather. However the Velcro fixtures were not doing a great job of holding the control boxes, transformers and extension lead in place. So I decided to replace the Velcro with some ply and 2x1 PSE wood which I can then screw the control boxes, transformers and extension lead to.

IMG_3762 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

IMG_3763 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

A couple of our stick insects have recently past away. They are getting old and have live well past their life expectancy. We still have a good few stick insects left and within the last week, we have had 10 babies ones hatched, we had to freeze the remaining eggs to prevent too many hatching.

This is our fairy garden lit up at night (our final resting place for our stick insets)

IMG_3716 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

One of the things that I wanted for the garden was a crazy golf course, I manage to make one out of some spare wood. This is a working progress, but is currently playable. I plan to add more modular sections to this so that I can arrange it in various ways to alter the course. This will eventually be painted with some wood preserver and covered with some fake grass. I've made some temporary obstacles including a ramp and some arches which can be positions in various ways or removed to give a variation of play. I'm hoping to make some proper themeing obstacles for this golf course.

IMG_3759 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

It looks like summer has ended weather wise quiet early this year, I'm hoping to get more done this year, subject to the weather, time and budget.

[Mark]

Nice work with the Crazy Golf! Glad the bad weather didn’t do any serious damage.

[royjess]

Thanks Mark. I've some more garden projects to keep me busy over the winter.

[royjess]

It might be winter, but there is still plenty of more things to tick off on my to-do list.

Our little fairy memorial garden had a lick of paint and the solar power batteries were replaced

IMG_4402 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

We had a few days of nice weather, so I started on some outside jobs.

I had a couple of fence post that made the leaning tower of Pisa look straight. So I propped them up and dug out the footing and filled in with some concrete, which I covered with cardboard and polythene sheet for when the temperatures drop. I will remove the other post that I've used to prop up the fence in a few days time to give the concrete the chance to reach full strength. You will also notice that I've added a memorial garden next to the fence, which I added towards the end of last year as we have lost a couple of our budgies, and they are now laid to rest there. I've added a white rose bush to the memorial garden.

IMG_4394 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

Now to tackle our shed which needs refurbishing and retheming.

First I empty it out, it was fun trying to find space for all our garden equipment in our small home

The floor and lower sides are rotten and needs replacing

IMG_4395 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

Took me the best part of two days to take down the shed as most of the screws were rotten or wouldn't budge. After removing the shed, I rolled back the flooring of the shed to reveal the rotten base

IMG_4401 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

My next job is to examine the rest of the shed and see what can be salvage. Thankfully most of it is in good condition.

It's going to take a few weeks to refurbish the shed, but I'll keep you updated on the progress.

[number1]

Blimey that shed should keep you busy for awhile.

[royjess]

Today I examined each shed panel one by one. I identified any wood rot and I then cut away any rotten wood plus another 2" of good wood beyond the rotten wood.

IMG_4403 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

Replacement wood was cut to size and test fitted. I've numbered the parts but not ready at this stage to fit them properly as I plan to pre-treat both the new and old wood with some clear triple action wood preserver. I'm hoping to stain and creosote the panels after the new wood has been fitted. I've got to test an off cut to see if the wood can be stained or creosoted after the triple action wood preserver has been applied.

IMG_4404 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

There are 6 of these panels, two on each side and two on the rear. There is also a different section for the front where the doors hang. It' didn't take me long to do these today. Once the wood has been cut, I brought the panels inside the home to clean off any spiderwebs and insects and to allow the wood to dry out. Unfortunately I did run out of some of the wood required, so I will have to order some more wood which will delay getting this done. However there is still other parts of the shed that I can work on in the mean time.

[royjess]

I've placed an order for some more timber to finish the repairs of the side panels, hopefully these won't take too long to arrive.

In the mean time, I measured and cut some 2x4 PSE to build a brand new base. Some pilot holes have been drilled into these ready to screw them together.

IMG_4405 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

All the wood and side panels have now been brought inside where I'm currently preparing them to have some wood preserver and colour stain applied. The staining will take some time as I will need to wait for each coat to dry. I'm hoping to start applying the wood preserver over the next few days.

[Mark]

I’m impressed! I’ve never seen a shed repaired before. The tatty ones I’ve had in the past were well beyond repair, and it was easier and cheaper to scrap and buy new.

[royjess]

I did look at the option of purchasing a whole new shed, but I would still have the hassle of disposing the old one. New sheds that I looked at tend to come with OSB (chipboard) flooring and roof which won't last long. So I probably would have built a new floor frame anyway. The side panels didn't take too much trouble to cut out the old wood and replace with new.

This is going to be more than just a shed refurbish. I going to add a porch and decking to the front as well as give it an enchanted themed look to go with the rest of the garden. So if I bought a new shed, I would still be spending time on it. At the moment, I seem to be limited to the weather, so treating the timber is going to take time as I'm doing this inside in the dry warm conservatory, but am limited for space, so I be doing it bit by bit. What is really taking the time is the prep, the shed has been painted with a blue stain/paint which I'm currently removing by scrubbing it off with a stiff brush.

[royjess]

The end of the timber is soaked in the Triple action wood treatment for a minimum of 3 minutes. Then the wood treatment is brushed onto the rest of the timber. This is allowed to dry and then I repeated the treatment.

IMG_4406 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

Once the wood treatment has dried, I them treated the wood with some Creocote (Creosote substitute). This takes 24 hours to dry and I've only painted two sides of the timber. The timber will need two coats, so it's going to take about 4 days per batch of wood that I'll be treating.

IMG_4411 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

Now my attention is turned to the base that the shed will sit on. Traditionally sheds are normally built upon a concrete base or slabs. The problem with this is that when it rains or floods, a water puddle sits underneath the shed which causes the bottom of the shed to rot.

IMG_4407 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

I was advise to raise the shed up off the ground using concrete fence post. By raising the shed up will allow any rain water to drain away as well as a flow of air beneath the shed. So removing the old slabs and preparing the ground was backbreaking work. I also dug up the ground next to where the shed will be as well as in front to accommodate a larger flower bed next to the shed as well as the porch/decking in front of it. I marked out the corners of where the shed will be with my Sheppard's hooks.

I laid down some concrete fence post, and used a spirit level to check that they are level. The front one is slight lower as this needs to accommodate the decking, so the wooden frame will need to be slightly lower so that the shed doors misses the deck flooring.

IMG_4409 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

I have some old gravel which I will lay on the ground beneath the shed to allow for better drainage.

[Mark]

Good idea using the concrete posts. Last time I laid a shed base I made it from concrete, with plenty of hardcore foundations. Good luck to any subsequent owner who wanted to remove it! I did put a slight slope in the base. The front was about an inch higher than the back to drain water and save it puddling. I did the same to a patio that was laid the same time, but the end by the house was higher obviously.

[royjess]

Don't forget Mark, that our garden has been known to flood, the old slabs were laid by the previous owners and it was on a slant. So there were no chance of the shed escaping the water with our level of flooding

The first batch of timers had been treated and I was able to fit it all together. I dipped the screws into some Vaseline before I screwed the timber together. They screwed in like I was screwing into cheese. Apparently the Vaseline will also allow for easy removal of the screws if I decided to take it apart again at a later date.

So the base went together smoothly. You can also see that I laid down some gravel and trampled it down.

IMG_4412 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

I'm now treating on the next batch of timber which will form the porch/decking base. Hopefully these will be ready to fit together by the weekend.

[number1]

Thats a good idea using concrete posts for the base, took me ages to lay slabs level for when I had a shed.

[royjess]

I've yet to relay our patio, that is next on the list and once it has been re-laid, I can then start of construction our Garden railway. I hope that the patio don't take too long to level out. I'm just waiting for the weather to warm up a bit with constant temperatures above 5 degrees to ensure that the concrete hardens properly without the risk of frost bite.

Our shed floor had been rotten for a few years and it been on my to-do list for some time. I got the idea of using the fence post from a conversation that I had with the people that I know that work at Great Yarmouth model village. They said that you need to raise up the shed to allow air to flow below it. They suggested using the concrete fence posts. They have numerous timber/shed type buildings around the model village.

Many American YouTube suggest that you raise them up using a good few centre blocks (hollow breeze block)

https://www.travisperkins.co.uk/215mm-b ... src=aw.dsb

When I place my order with our local builders merchant, they had no idea what I was after when I asked for some centre blocks. So I opted for the fence post instead.

[Mark]

I’d forgotten about you flooding issue. The concrete posts are a great solution.
My concrete base is probably a bit overkill to be honest, and probably a little too permanent. I did have a look at the place on Google maps satellite view. It looks like it’s gone now, along with a large concrete pond built. I imagine that was a pain to remove as well!

Sorry for the hijack! Back to the main plot!

[royjess]

Not high jacking the thread at all Mark, all relevant. A simple slab base with sharp sand should be suffice, that what the previous owners did with my previous base. It did move a bit, but not enough to make a difference.

A good base will last for years, but will be a pain to remove or renovate if you change you mind at a later date.

Today I sanded off the old blue colour stain/paint from the shed to reveal some nice good solid wood. I tried out a drill sanding disc to make life easier.

IMG_4413 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

[royjess]

I was expecting to lay the porch base down over a week ago. I did make a start on constructing it before the Beast from the East came in. With sub zero temperatures and snow, I was unable to do any construction work outside.

IMG_4417 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

Here is the railway track in the snow

IMG_4418 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

So for the past week, I've been working non stop pre-treating the wood. Most of it is done, half of the new timber and most of the old panels, except for the gable roof top ends. I can only go as fast as the Creocote dries (24 hours each coat).

Today change in temperature meant that I could get back to laying the porch base, which is stepped down slightly to accommodate the thickness of the decking.

IMG_4423 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

Some more timber was cut to size today to repair some of the panels, including some quadrant timber to hold the glass in. These were cut at a 45 degree angle using a mitre block.

IMG_4421 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

The window gets some preparation by removing the old colour stain.

IMG_4420 by Jess Lee, on Flickr

I can't do much more until I get the remainder of the timber pre-treated.

I still need to cut the timber for the porch supports, the roof itself and a new floor.