Jennifer O’Connell: The Shed brought our house to the brink

I will admit The Shed was my idea. But I also want to make it known that, in the event of any future division of assets, I will not be claiming custody.

The Shed started out, as is the way for many of the world’s most intractable disputes, with a question over the allocation of space and resources. Namely: where is a family of five, who recently moved into a rented house with no shed, supposed to keep their bikes?

At first we left them locked up around the back, tied with tarpaulin. This arrangement proved no match for the special Atlantic cocktail of roaring wind and salty rain which comes hurtling up over the cliffs, ripping the tarpaulin off like a Band Aid in a hurricane.

I googled the question, and discovered that people who don’t use the hall – because it’s too small or they have nice floors or they are not students – sometimes store their bikes in the bath. Others use them as wall art. As we’re not smelly or artists or mad, those options were out.

Then I spotted it. The website described it as an “Easy Store”. High-tensile steel construction, it said. Easy five-step assembly. Twenty year warranty. And it was a bargain. I was sold. Rather, The Shed was.

Rusting forlornly

It arrived a week later, as the rain drove down, and the bikes stood rusting forlornly in the back. I stood in the doorway and surveyed the small, damp, distinctly unshed-like box on the front step. “Wait. I ordered a bike shed.”

“That’s it,” the delivery guy shouted over his shoulder as he climbed into this truck. “Have you ever put one of those together?”

I conceded that I had not. "But it's okay," I said. "The husband is very handy. He could assemble an Ikea bookcase blindfolded."

He issued a hollow laugh as he started the ignition. “That shed took me four days. With two of my brothers. And we’re builders.”

I’m not exaggerating when I say the husband is a dab hand at the Ikea bookcase. He once singlehandedly constructed an eight-seater dining table from scratch – as in, not from Ikea. He has tiled a bathroom, and magically fitted a kitchen to a room with wonky walls.

There is literally no DIY job he won’t take on and complete to 90 per cent perfection. At the final hurdle he gets bored, or there’s rugby on the TV, or the drill needs charging. This how the table never got varnished, and the door kept falling off the bathroom cabinet.

His 90 per cent completion rate has earned him the nickname “90”. In return, he calls me “five”. My 5 per cent usually entails ordering bargain sheds on the internet and then standing around helpfully offering advice and bottles of craft beer.

Gameshow host

He stepped over the box a few times before asking me, in the kind of tone you might use to address a wild-eyed person you discover brandishing a weapon at the foot of your bed in the middle of the night, what I had ordered this time.

“A shed!” I announced, like a demented gameshow host.

He scowled at the box, which was about the size and shape of one a wedding dress might come in, and at me. After a few weeks of scowling and stepping over it, he finally took the parts out and spread them over the lawn. Then he sighed deeply, and returned to the rugby.

Another week passed before he moved a few bits around, and screwed something to something.

More weeks went by. Whenever I looked out at the garden I was greeted by the sight of bits of corrugated tin flapping daintily in the breeze, in a very un-high-tensile steel-like manner. I dropped hints that went down like Trump’s tweets. I offered craft beer. I threatened to downgrade his nickname to “70”.

With our bikes and our marriage on the brink of disintegration, he marshalled two of our children and borrowed two others. Every time I looked outside, they all seemed to be standing around shaking their heads.

But, miraculously, the bits of corrugated biscuit, or whatever they were, got screwed together, and something approaching a shed emerged. For a few hours, there was peace. The bikes were warm and dry. Then the wind started to howl.

“Storm’s coming,” I said, staring at the leaden sea. “Will that shed hold up?”

“Definitely,” he said. “I mean, one screw was missing. But it’ll be fine.”

Cover of darkness

The wind clashed and howled and banged all night. When he could take it no more, he went out to check on The Shed. Suffice to say, it was not where he had left it.

He retrieved it and, under cover of darkness, secured it in place – on its side – with an ingenious sturdy wooden frame. It hasn’t moved since. The bikes are back atrophying against the wall.

The husband – let’s call him “40” – says I am never to order anything DIY-related from the internet again.

But I’ve seen this thing called a cyclepod…