Potting shed details, details, details...

Le Châtelet de Charlier is progressing nicely, even though it's winter. Buffalo hasn't had any snow yet – and it looks like it'll be at least a week before there's even a chance of it.

This past weekend I built three flower boxes from old closet bi-fold doors taken out of the house in a bathroom remodel a few years ago.

I made a door handle from a hand rake that we never used. I made three more hanging solar lights from terracotta pots, moved a shelving unit in from the garage that was there when we moved in 14 years ago, and started making mullions for the windows that didn't have any. It was a very productive weekend!

My neighbor Steve was walking by (as neighbors do) and suggested that the upper diamond window get some mullions in it because the solid glass almost made it look like there was no glass there – this coming from the guy that told me not to waste time adding the slate tile foundation because it was making the shed too "precious"! He's had some valuable suggestions along the way and he's fun to talk to, so every time I add a clever detail, or something that requires extra effort, or have some design scheme in mind, we now refer to it as "precious."

If the weather holds out this weekend, I'll get a potting table structure started out there. I'm thinking to use the $500 gift certificate I won for the scrap marble and granite "carpet" creative competition a couple years ago and see how far that goes toward getting a "scratch and dent" piece of soapstone (thanks Roxanne for that idea!), or unfinished marble table top for it.

I'm getting a lot more done this fall than I thought I ever would.

The mullions were a nice add to this window. It's too cold out there to paint, so it may have to wait until Spring.

More mullions. Because if some are good, more are better, and more precious.

Here's the potting shed door. It was in the garage when we moved in. It originally came from inside the house somewhere. The white closet bi-fold doors to the left are what I made into window boxes.

In progress. They're deeper than I imagined, so I'll probably add some Styrofoam peanuts or something in the bottom, then staple in a heavy plastic lining for the soil/plants – with appropriate drainage configurations. Don't want water passing through the lovers.

I painted them a terracotta color. Painting louvers is mind-numbing.

The rusty old shelving unit that's probably been in the garage for a generation or two looks perfectly patina'd for a potting shed. And it fits there like it was meant to be there, under the former 120-year old attic window. It is a working shed, so I have plenty of plants stored in there for the winter.

Getting dark earlier, and with no electric out there, the skylight is proving to be worth its expense and effort.