THANKS to good ol’ Gumtree, Brendan scored big time. I’ve been promising him a shed for a while now, but I didn’t fancy spending $800 when I can’t even afford to buy a new bed for the bedroom (the one we’re on has been repaired three times and is definitely on its last legs).

But trawling the listings every night has paid off handsomely, with Brendan coming home with a 3m x 3m shed for a tidy $50! Yup, $50 plus a few hours dismantling the monster with his worker Sean (who incidentally fell through the roof while doing it) and the pieces were in our backyard ready to be set up again:

Of course, without anyone else to lend a hand, yours truly was called in to helped put in a few rivets and hold the panels together. I quite enjoyed it, but once I realised I had to help set the roof on top, I was ready to call the neighbour over!

But we managed it fine the next morning and Brendan took time to seal any previous holes that we didn’t rivet through:

We’re planning to paint the shed with a rust converter-cum-metal paint to spruce it up but we’re waiting for the winter gusts to die down before we end up painting the neighbour’s shed at the same time! Brendan will also screed in a concrete floor once we’ve finalised the shed’s position in the garden.

Before we go, we thought we’d give you a progress update on Shadow. She is in good health again, and is putting on weight fast. Here she is in her fabulously awkward, lanky stage: