By Dustin Heron Urban

It is safe to say that not all sheds are loveable. Ours, however, has enough character that I believe its story is worth telling. It is a story that begins with our love of the outdoors, a love which has contributed to the amassment of more gear and toys than our compact house could handle. While its purpose—to contain stuff—was to be rather mundane, we and others in South Main will be living with the thing for years to come. So we wanted it to have some character. Thus we turned to our good friend and woodworker, Johnny Bartsch.

Johnny and his wonderful wife Belinda call their Buena Vista-based business Against the Grain, and they have been producing eye-catching furniture, sheds, cabinetry and most anything else that can be constructed from wood for decades now.

In working up the shed design with Johnny, we started with the dimensions and a limited budget. The footprint would be eight feet by 12 feet, and the materials would consist largely of reclaimed materials which Johnny collects. And to save on cost, I would pitch in on labor throughout the construction process. The shed would be erected at Johnny and Belinda’s place west of town since Johnny’s shop and materials are located there.

So throughout the summer of 2008 Johnny guided me patiently through the construction of my shed. We culled through stacks of blue and purple-streaked beetle-kill ponderosa pine from Colorado which Johnny acquired in log form and had custom milled. This serves as the building’s trim. We sorted decades old metal roofing material Johnny salvaged an old store in Buena Vista for siding and roofing material. Torn and mangled sheets were discarded while old screw holes had to be filled to prevent leakage. Ultimately the juxtaposition of weathered steel and beetle-kill pine would bring the distinctive feel we were looking for in the building. We have Johnny to thank for that design ingenuity. Johnny custom built the structure’s windows from redwood that was at one time part of a dock at Twin Lakes.

And all this we accomplished under summer skies at the foot of Mt. Princeton to the tune of Blind Faith, Neil Young and other classic tunes from Johnny and Belinda’s youth, an era which produced much of the music I too prefer best. Delicious microbrews topped off the days as we swapped alpine adventure and tomato growing stories.

When the shed was finally complete, there was just one more hurdle to surmount: moving it. The local crane wouldn’t suffice, so we called in the big guns from Salida, a boom truck which lifted the shed onto a flatbed trailer. We then drove the five miles or so to South Main where the crane hoisted the shed over our fence and into place in our backyard.

Today our toys and tools have finally found a place to live, and a wonderful friendship with Johnny and Belinda lives on.

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