Lions Hold Coat of Arms and Crown Over Castle Shed

Amersfoort has a city emblem of lions holding the coat of arms and crown. My castle shed, inspired by the medieval city needed the same emblem. 

Left is a photo of the actual emblem on the Koppelpoort, water gate, it is about 2 to 3 feet wide. On the right is the drawing that hubby did to make it ten inches tall, in scale for our shed.

The crown is done in metallic gold paint.

 
 Wow! I love how it's coming out.

Still a little more to go.

All done and it's a fabulous little piece. We especially liked it sitting in a bookcase in the living room.

Here it is mounted above the door. It's made to fit the space but how I wish it was bigger. I put the bug in hubby's ear that if he made a larger one for the shed this one can go in the bookcase. Think he'll go for it?

Coat of arms now available at our Etsy shop here.

Tea with Scones & Lemon Curd

The table and chairs looked so inviting in front of the garden castle shed on Saturday that I decided we should have tea, scones and lemon curd for lunch while there was still shade.

The sheer table cloth has a home in the shed so it's easy to spread it on the purple table and it's all set for a quick tea time.

The lemon curd is home made from earlier in the week, I blended some cream cheese, sour cream and touch of powdered sugar for a little mock Devonshire cream to go along with the currant scones.

The teacups and saucers are perfect for a little Easter weekend tea, sunny yellow with pops of color.

The Myott shield on the back reminds me that we still want to make the Amersfoort city shield for our castle shed.

It's pretty special, here it is on the Koppelpoort, a medieval gate in the Dutch town of Amersfoort.

Code Enforcement Checked on Castle Shed

Monday morning, by 11 a.m. a city building code inspector was at our door. Some neighbor didn't waste a minute to call, must have called at 8 a.m. to report us. The roof frame went up permanently on Saturday.

We invited the inspector in, I was confident we did not need a permit for the shed. He said someone walking by called about the the height of the roof. He measured the square footage and we are well below 120 square feet. He measured the height, it is 11 feet, a foot below the 12 foot high maximum.

The inspector asked if the base was treated wood, yes it is. He asked if we were adding electricity. I told him no, only solar lighting. We were very happy when he left. It is good knowing that we are okay and not violating any building codes.

Look at the gargoyle's scowl, he was not happy but the pot of yellow Johnny-Jump Ups that our neighbor Tracey brought us did cheer him up.

We worked a while today and put out a few things after cleaning up. Our Dutch shoes fit right in to our Dutch inspired shed.

And I couldn't resist putting out some solar lights. Don't you think we need a chandelier hanging in each turret? They will be solar.

We finished the back side of the second turret, put up the back side panels and back fascia today. I painted the back wall. Next we will do the smaller back turret panels so the slant roof can go on.

Here is our inspiration, the Koppelpoort water gate built in the 1400s in Amersfoort, Netherlands. Jan took the photo when we went back to visit in 2006, what a surprise during our midnight walk. The Dutch know lighting so well.

Garden Shed

It's been much too long since my last post. Christmas came and went, then the new year and before you know it I was very busy with my real estate business.

Finally, in early September things slowed down and my thoughts once again went to my long time desire to have a Dutch water gate inspired garden shed or little building.

On Sunday, September 15 after brunch we pulled out the tools to build a little foam core model of what might work.

Here is the model for a two turret shed. It is inspired by the photo Jan took of the Koppelpoort water gate in Amersfoort, see our About Us page.

The left side is the street level entrance to the medieval water gate, our inspiration for the garden shed.

That was a week ago, much has happened on the project already!
More to come, bye for now.