Shed in the Spotlight
– Midmar Men’s Shed

Together, the Midmar Men’s Shed members laid the foundations of their new permanent home. Every single one of the members playing a part of building a resource for their community for this generation and many more to come.

Back in 2020, we featured a ’Shed in the Spotlight’ on Midmar Men’s Shed which had been meeting since October 2018 and was on the verge of officially opening a temporary Shed—four portable cabins donated by a local farmer joined together—to address the lack of facilities for social activities in Midmar, 18 miles west of Aberdeen.

The Midmar Shedders have been happily located there beside the Midmar Hall upper car park ever since whilst also moving forward with the build of a permanent facility to future-proof their offering to the men in the local community.

Shed Chairman Gordon Gauld said: “With our current premises, two of the cabin areas were left open plan for a workshop, one cabin for storage and lathe and the remaining area is the kitchen and social area, which can get quite crowded with six to eight members. Our optimum capacity for the workshop area is about four or five. If we all want to meet together, we use the public hall next door.

“We are a fairly small community and currently have a dozen members ranging in age from mid-40s to late-80s—with a few occasional social members that drop in for a chat. One of our social members now has a mobility scooter whilst awaiting a hip replacement and cannot access the Shed, so we meet at the hall for a coffee and a chat or he comes on a fine weather day when we can catch up outdoors. It will be great when we have our new fully-accessible-for-all Shed!

“The new Shed premises will allow for additional much-needed space for our current membership with the added bonus of our own toilet, a meeting room and hot and cold running water finally!
We will also have scope for a few more new members and have opportunities to advertise to surrounding areas that do not have a Shed on their community notice boards and invite new members to join us.

“The initial plan was to build a 80m2 timber-framed Shed close to our current site but we realised after using the temporary shed that a separate workshop area was needed. Additional space was made available by the removal of trees so the building has grown slightly. I am a former architectural technologist from the construction industry and we are also fortunate to have a wide range of skills on our membership. We also knew tradespeople in our community that could assist the project whilst also training the members to help.

“In November 2023, we dug the trenches for the foundations for a 100m2 Shed and inserted the pins to set the levels ready for the steel mesh. Every member had a part to play and each lay a block—it was a full team effort. It was important to us that every member had the chance to get involved and we ensured a high standard of health and safety, risk assessments and many a toolbox talk took place. The building inspector has been round and we are delighted to report that all works are satisfactory.

“Through our risk assessments, we identified that when the Midmar Hall has popular events, the car park can get extremely busy and this could impact on access for medical attention such as an ambulance if require—so we had to take this into account. We are fortunate that the hall has a defibrillator that we can have access to and are also exploring a critical injury first aid kit for our Shed.

“On top of the build, we carry out recycling projects where we repair and sell on items which generates a reasonable income for us. Thankfully, our expenditure is not high, around £1,000 a year which mostly covers our insurance.

“This year, we have also taken on quite a few community projects such as clearing paths for local walks and replacing the pedestrian footbridge over a local stream for the local community which suffered from rotting post ends, handrail supports and broken treads. Our Shedders do a tremendous amount for our community including raised beds for the school, maintenance work for the village hall and grounds and also repair of the canopy for the local well.

“Like all Sheds, we are always trying to source materials and are delighted to say that we have not had to fundraise for any materials to date. We have been overwhelmed by the support shown for our Shed through donations from local businesses and our community.

“Hunter Construction donated a whole host of materials
from some of their suppliers to get us started with the
new Shed’s foundations. They also enlisted the
help of Breedon, Jewson, Grampian Steel and JKR to assist with the supply of block, sand, steel mesh and concrete. Miller Plant supplied us with excavators and hardcore. It was wonderful support from a group of local companies.

“We are now at the stage of sourcing money through donations and grant funding for the next stage of the build. The timber kit walls, roof trusses, metal sheeting for the roof and doors and windows to make it a wind and water tight structure.

“We plan to source materials as much as we can over the winter period and take time to research and source what funding is available and to start applying for grants. We have many decisions to make in the future in terms of types of under floor heating, dust extraction systems and equipment (through Axminster Tools) and solar panels with battery storage that will feed surplus energy back to Midmar Hall. We should then be in a position to commence construction in the spring. Watch this space.”

Midmar Men’s Shed is open on Tuesday evenings from 7.00-9.00pm and Friday mornings from 9.30am—1.00pm. Follow the Shed’s journey through their website and Facebook page.

Shed in the Spotlight– Midmar Men’s Shed

Shed in the Spotlight
– Midmar Men’s Shed