Sheds and bad weather

Having finished putting the roofing felt on the new shed, but not quite finished battoning it down as it was getting dark I made the fatal mistake of thinking the job was done for now. But no. The english weather has conspired against me, and tore off some of the brand new felt. So I was fixing that back on, and doubling the number of nails I've used. Unfortunately it's meant I've had to over lap where the tear was. Which means the felt might not reach as far as the battoning will allow. Time will tell.

On the plus side, I have found some time to start outfitting the workshop. We managed to keep the old kitchen worktop intact and relatively unaffected by the weather etc. I've put to beams along the wall just under the window, with the worktop on top of that. I've only put a couple of legs in. The worktop is in two parts, originally to go round the corner of the kitchen. I'm going to straighten that out, but it does mean an extension to the horizontal beams I've put in as they aren't quite long enough. Not a major problem really - just another trip to B&Q. The worktop will extend most of the way to the back of the shed, so I'm going to put some shelving in so it extends all the way down. I've also got some of the carcuses from the old wall cupboards, which I'm going to hang, probably on the back wall of the shed.

Next stop the power systems. To permenantly run a power cable out to the shed is going to be expensive. I'd need to change the consumer unit in the house, and add a fuse - then run the cable down. At some point we're going to have to change the consumer unit anyway, but not just yet. So I'm going to get a 12 volt leisure battery - like you get on boats - some solar panels to recharge it, some 12 volt florescent bulbs, perhaps even a motion sensor and a light detector so it will switch itself on and off appropriately. That will provide lighting.

I'm also considering getting an 2kw inverter so I can run my tools off the 12v battery. A couple are rated above 1kw, so I'm going to go for a 2kw inverter - should be more than enough and allow for more powerful tools later on. I'm going to set it up so when the battery goes flat and can't power the inverter anymore, I can just unplug the shed from the battery and plug it into an extension cord coming from the house.