For one reason and another, last summer's project (the summerhouse) was not completed. I will return to it at a later stage. In the meantime, this year's project is about to get under way.
Some time last year, I cleared the weeds from around a door from the square garden into the yard. Those weeds have obviously regrown, so they will need clearing again.
They are growing between the bricks that cover a small area outside what used to be the garden shed, attached to the southern end of the greenhouse. It's a bit like a brick paved patio and faces east. There are walls on the west and south sides of it and the former shed used to stand to the north. This is a rough plan of the shed/pergola area:
Obviously, the area needs to be thoroughly cleared and weeds are not the only issue - there is also a heap of rubbish that needs to be taken to the rubbish tip and a quantity of bricks. The bricks came from inside the house when we removed a chimney breast many years ago.
The plan, then, is to create a semi-covered patio, on the lines of a pergola, but surrounded on two sides by the already existing walls and on a third by the rebuilt shed. The open side will have a rail like you might find round a decking area.
But first, I will need to rebuild at least the south end of the shed, because once the pergola is in place, it might not be possible to work so easily on the shed.
My 'helper' was in good form too, but she preferred playing football to actually doing any work!
We have decided that the shed needs to have a brick wall about 3 feet high (the same height as the brick wall on the front of the greenhouse), with a wooden structure built on top of it. Also, the back wall of the shed is partly the garage, then where the garage finishes, the garden wall takes over. But the garden wall is shorter than the roof-line of the shed.
Whoever built the shed in the first place added a wooden panel to the top of the lower section of the wall and attached the roof of the shed to that. That has collapsed and is lying on the ground where the old shed used to stand.
We intend instead to build the wall up to the correct height - using the bricks from the chimney breast. We have now found a use for them at last. But first, they are still covered in old mortar from when they used to be a wall, so they need to be cleaned off.
It is really hard work cleaning old mortar off old bricks - you wouldn't believe it! Some of the mortar is soft, so doesn't come off cleanly at all. Some is like concrete and so hard you almost end up breaking the brick instead of removing the mortar. Now and again, it is quite satisfying to hit the chisel with the hammer and a whole chunk of mortar pops loose. But after an hour, I had only managed to clean off 10 whole bricks and half a dozen part bricks (these will be useful for infill and use as hard core when the concrete is finally laid for the base of the future summerhouse.
It also leaves quite a mess.
It doesn't look like I have done anything at all, but my back, shoulders and upper arms (especially the arm wielding the hammer) are all aching to prove that I have in fact dome something, even if it doesn't look very much.
Somewhere along the west facing wall, there is a gate into the drive that will also need to be replaced.
Eventually, I hope it will look something like this, though not as grand and with walls around two sides:
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