Courtesy of the long weekend and some free time I finally managed to finish up one of my other projects and get some pictures of it :)
As a backstory, we've had a small metal shed at this place to use for tools and such over the years. I store my lawnmower and all of our garden goodies in there, but it's been taking a beating from constant exposure to the West wind. The one wall was torn through despite reinforcing efforts, the doors were creased, the floor was rotting out and collapsing in the corners, and it was generally a mess. So the question becomes spend the time and money to repair the thing, or just get rid of it and build something that works better, in a better part of the yard? I opted for the latter, and our landlady agreed.
An hour with the saber s
aw and the old shed was off the rotted floor and partway loaded into my trailer (Ian came by later and helped me load it fully. It was freecycled to a family on the Northside that had nothing to put their things in and no space in their budget to buy one). The floor was as bad as I feared, but the underside explained the problem fully. Instead of leveling out the grade, putting some gravel for drainage, using skids and the like, someone cut slabs of 2x4 and dropped the shed onto them. Needless to say they were so sunken and rotted that the floor was sitting on wet dirt all the time, and the rot just took it's course from there.
For the new shed, I picked a spot behind the house, sheltered from the wind with a decent grade for drainage. It's a damp spot in the yard, but I leveled out the grade, and set enough gravel that the space can drain. The floor of the shed was made from 2x6 joists with a double layer of 7/16ths osb sheeting. It rests on a pair of 4x4 pressure treated skids with slabs of 2x6 in the corners to provide support and keep the floor from sagging.
The walls are 2x4 framing with osb exterior sheeting. I had a couple of slabs of 10mm tempered glass floating around the house so I incorporated them into the sides of the shed as windows. For the roof, I didn't want the typical truss system as I would lose most of the headroom and be back to where I was with the metal shed (i.e. stooping all the time) so it's a modified version of the way some of the package sheds are put together, and was strong enough to hold myself and Ian during shingling, so not so shabby :) Doors are 2x4 and sheeting as well.
The Saturday after the roof was up (drip edge and two layers of tar roofing paper), Ian kindly offered to help me shingle the roof. Quick work with asphalt shingles, though my side is a little wonky. I think I understand how to do it now, so it was a lesson well learned :) Finally, 3 2x4's took a trip through the tablesaw and were ripped down into stripping and painted white to use as trim for the windows and doors. If you're wondering why the trim doesn't extend to the edges of the doors, it has to do with the offset on the hinges and the fact that you can't open the doors fully if you put trim to the very edges. This works, and if I'm being totally paranoid about it, I can mask off the edges and paint a white strip so it matches ;)
Finally, some tool hangers, a storage box for my scrap wood, and we're in business :) Not too shabby, but next time I may wait for some help with the walls. Having my back lock up in the middle of the week from all the lifting didn't make for a fun few days at work :/
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