I realized pretty early on that i was going to need a second shed, located not far from the first one (a shed remodeled into a tiny house) to keep the rest of my stuff in. Clothes, dishes, cookware, quilting supplies, knitting, extra chairs…these were all things that i wanted to hang onto that didn’t necessarily need to be in the main cabin on a daily basis. I stopped at one of those road side lots displaying sheds with windows and porches. They showed me the model i was interested in, made me a good price, offered a payment plan, and i put down a $100 deposit. There was something that didn’t sit right with me about it though. The guy didn’t have an office. He used his buddy’s 3 in 1 printer to make a copy of my driver’s license in a uhaul office. Between him, his buddy, and his buddy’s wife, they couldn’t find a highlighter. Nothing about this transaction screamed professional. Everything about it screamed “danger will robinson, danger!” I started asking lots of questions. For instance, there were models on the lot that had holes cut out of the sides or bags of trash in them. Some of the models were missing doors or looked very used. Why were they like that? The guy assured me i had nothing to worry about. Once i got back in the car i googled the company he supposedly worked for. It turned out the models looked lived in because they were. The company was in a different state and contracted all these random people to sell their sheds for them all over the USA. There was no office, no help desk, and nowhere to file your complaints. The sheds did not arrive as advertised. They were not water proof and some of them didn’t have the windows or shelving they were supposed to come with. Many of the shed porches didn’t have the railings or the sheds didn’t have porches when they were supposed to. One shed came unpainted. Another shed’s paint flaked off within a week and the plywood rotted in the rain. These people were all on payment plans for their sheds. So, when the company made no offer or attempt to repair the sheds, the people stopped making the payments on them, and they were repossessed. The same man that would have sold the shed to them would have a crew load it back onto a truck and dump it in the very lot where he had ensnared the people in his scam to begin with. So, the sheds i had seen with the cut outs in the side like they had once been glued to another structure or the bags of trash locked inside…this was a graveyard of sorts for repossessed sheds purchased by poor duped suckers like i was about to be. I called the man from the car and said i’d read some reviews and changed my mind. I told him i knew he’d be keeping my 100 dollar deposit but i wanted to cancel my order immediately. The man said that the reviews were true, but that he was different from the company and he’d been doing all the repairs himself for his customers and he took care of his own. I said that was fine but i still wanted to cancel my order. He said, well, don’t worry about the 100 dollars. I will give you your 100 dollars back. I figured this was just a ploy to get me to think he was a nice guy so i’d reconsider and want the shed. I was right. He did cancel my order and i never saw my 100 dollars. I was very shaken by the 300+ reviews i continued to read in the car at the HEB parking lot. One horror story after another. All these people were trapped paying on this giant rotting, defective eye sore in their yard that they couldn’t store anything in and they couldn’t stop paying on it if they wanted to maintain their credit. I wanted something legit. I went to home depot, dropped $2000 more than planned, and bought a custom tuff shed. They forgot the window in the door and the vent for airflow, so the crew had to come back 2 times (free of charge) to put those in. However, they built me a really sturdy, water proof, well made shed. It was another one of those “you get what you pay for” moments for me. I tried to save a buck and it almost back-fired big time. Sometimes there’s something to be said for going with the mainstream option. I ended up paying it off in 6 months, before the interest kicked in. So, that un-air-conditioned shed is the only thing on the property that i own outright. Hopefully as time passes more things will join it.