Revcounter 376: Discovering the universal shed quotient

By: Guy Allen

Date: 25.10.2016

Why is it your fleet expands to fill 110 per cent of the available space?

Discovering the universal shed quotient

It’s about 20 years since partner Ms M Snr and I first wandered into the modest grounds of Chateau Mortgage and began the inspection tour. Even at that stage, we had a mini fleet of transports of delight (the mighty Kingswood and a few bikes) that needed housing. So we first inspected what seemed at the time to be a palatial shed, and then the small house that came with it.

Neither has ever appeared in a TV home-reno series, which is a little surprising since pretty much every other residential property in the western world has. Maybe next week.

You’ll know when it happens, because we’ll be the dorks standing in front of the ‘surprise cams’ demanding to know where they put the hoist and, by the way, where’s the cat door?

In the meantime, we’ve had to make our own fun. The car fleet has expanded a little, to include a mid-Seventies 6 Series and, shock, horror, another Bimmer, made this century. Meanwhile the bike gaggle has expanded to 15-ish. In case you were wondering, the Kingswood is now a family pet/heirloom – we’re about to celebrate 33 years of ownership. It’s also currently being re-upholstered in a style best described as leather rococo revival – but that’s another story.

Apart from realising it’s possible to have a traffic jam in your own back yard, we’ve discovered you really need to accommodate the toys if you want them to last. Sitting out in the weather buggers them in very short order. Rust is a bastard, the sun is probably even more destructive, and let’s not even get into the cost of hail damage.

With the allegedly grown-up self-described ‘kidult’ daughters off our hands, at least temporarily, we found some cash for a shed expansion program. Experience tells me it’s best to leave the hard decisions to Ms M Snr, so she chose the contractor.

How? She liked his truck, and the Skippy Chippy business name. Fair enough. So he built shed two, which seems about the same size as our house. Nice job.

Of course then came the awful reality that this still wasn’t enough space. At least not when the Kingswood comes back from the rococo revival. So we need a third. Four blokes turned up one morning and built shed three in a day. I still don’t understand how they do that. Overhead cam timing I can do, but this? Forget it.

But even that wasn’t really sufficient and now we’re running out of real estate. It begs the question: how many sheds is enough? I put this to young Andy Enright (the nearest staffer silly enough to listen) and he immediately responded, "one more than you have".

Welcome to the Universal Shed Quotient…

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