It’s part of the culture of allotmenting in the UK to make do and mend. People rarely buy things new and instead build things out of scraps or buy items second hand. My potting shed is, for example, a children’s playhouse with the slide and ladder ripped off (photo below). And I often see children’s swingsets on allotment plots used as climbing bean frames.
As part of taking on a new half of an allotment plot in 2025 I inherited a 6ft by 4ft handmedown shed. The previous tennants bought it for ~£20 plus £100 in van rental to get it to the site. They put it up and then it’s been sat for two years without a roof. When clearing the new half I realised there were two rolls of roofing felt stacked behind the shed, they were in surprisingly good condition so I thought it would be worth trying to salvage what I could of the shed including reroofing it.
The OSB sheets on the roof were soft in places at this point but I was worried about how I could remove them without damaging the rest of the structure. So I decided to dry out the sheeting as best I could and then I added roofing felt. It was hard in places to get the tacks to take but for the most part it worked far better than I expected.
I added fascia boards and changed the shattered windows to new polycarbonate sheeting. I did consider replacing with glass but the shed likely won’t last many years and there are no window frames within the original structure so it would have taken a lot more work to accomodate glass panes.
I didn’t want yet another brown, green or blue shed so I picked up a can of pink paint. I originally intended this colour as a base for a design to go on top – maybe I’ll get creative in 2026.
Once finished, a female neighbour brightly shouted from the plot gate “everyone’s going to know a woman has that plot!”. I’ve accidentally made women allotmenters visible with a barbie-fied shed.
