We took care of the most important improvements when we first moved in more than a year ago – getting rid of the floor-to-ceiling mirror, replacing the green tile in the bathroom, taking down every last inch of wallpaper – but the shed out back always seemed to me to have a lot of potential. Over the last six months or so, I’ve spend a lot of weekends out back making some improvements, and at this point, I’d call it mostly done.

When we moved in, the interior walls and ceiling were bare studs and beams, with one lightbulb and one working outlet. I finished off the walls and ceiling with plywood, cut with varying degrees of skill over the course of the project, and added in some wiring (thanks, Keith) to bring an additional power outlet to the workbench side of the shed.

The bare bulb in the ceiling became track lighting, with a leftover track from the lighting my dad and I added to the office, and I painted everything, including the bench, which, ugly as it was, I decided to leave in. With a new paint job and a particle board top, it doesn’t look so bad anymore. Finally, I added shelves around the window, cork board on one wall, and the required pegboard tool display on the other.

Now, who knows what I’ll actually do out there, but it’s nice to have a workspace. Maybe I’ll get a letterpress out there one day.