Wood N Garden Shed

Not really a shop, but it'll let me get stuff outa my shop which is how I'm gonna justify this thread's existence! LOL

First, planning. This was originally to be a woodshed, both for firewood and for storage of rough-sawn lumber. I was gonna build a separate garden shed for all that stuff but figured that costs being what they are, coupled with the fact that I don't have much rough lumber (and none of which is furniture grade anyway), I might as well combine the two purposes for now and maybe build something else down the road. Size is 12' deep by 16' wide. Depth was chosen basd on the length of rough sawn boards I have... after the change of plan, it still struck me as a good size.

Anyway, as this is a shed, it's purpose is to keep weather off stuff as cheaply as possible, practical, reasonable, etc. To save some costs, I cut posts from cedar that grew in the back of my property. Not having any equipment, I hauled the buggers out by hand (and a few with the help of a buddy). I called a local to come and remove a stump in the way and dig the post holes down to clear the frost line (about 4').



After the poles were set in place, he came back with a couple of loads of cheap pit run to build up the area enough to not have standing water in my woodpile. He brought it up about 14-16"! Don't think there will be problems now!




What I need to move inside when it's complete (about 8.5cords of hardwood). More pit run will be spread around here once the woodpile is moved.



Approach to the shop:



Front posts are notched for the beam:



The beams! 18' piece of 3x10 ash that the local mill had lying around in the "odds n ends" pile. I guess these'll work! Price was the same as buying 2x10 lumber and making up a beam so .. score!




Front beam hoisted up and lashed in place after getting the final fit of the posts just right:



After I got the cleats secured to the front beam, my buddy arrived and together we got the rear beam erected and secured (that's him nailing this one - 5" spikes are a bear to drive into dried, hard ash):



This coming weekend, weather permitting, the roof will go up. I decided to use dimensional lumber for the framing since a) hauling poles out of the bush without proper equipment to do so, just ***** and b) I was having trouble locating enough straight and suitably sized poles to do the job. This is a time saver for me - I need to get this done before the snow flies as I need the area where the wood is for the winter snow dump. As well, I couldn't find a single scrap of used tin in the area (not even crappy rusted tin - seems it all just goes straight to the recycling yards now) so I had to buy new stuff. That should hopefully be delivered this week.

Cool post. I'm a sucker for a genuine pole shed. Keep us posted on the progress

More work on the shed this weekend. Buddy and his young lad came over Sat afternoon to help get the rafters up. After a bit of fiddling around, we got the "system" worked out and the rafters up. Started the strapping but called it a day when it started getting dark.



A sense of the size.. while it's only 12x16, those 16' rafters start looking pretty big when they're all up there.





Today, I got over half the strapping done. Strapping is rough sawn 1x4 and 1x5 material from the odds n' ends pile at the mill. 50% more, cost-wise, than HD for material that is much stockier than the material you'd use to strap your ceiling for drywall... but well worth it in my book.

Progress is slow (much slower than I like) because it was just me working on it and I'm not at all comfortable with heights, so it's a case of moving the ladder back and forth and slowly going up and down. Uggh... I ran out of nails so that was that for that job for today.

I then started in on the girts. A bit of fiddly and notching and knot trimming (these were live trees a month ago) to get the upper side ones in place. Then I started running out of daylight. This shot is with the flash on (it's not that dark yet) but shows it off well.



These are as lit up from the shop spotlights. By the time I'd had a smoke and a beer and put away the tools, it was dark.





HD messed up my order for steel (not the first time), so I cancelled it and re-ordered from a local building supplier. Rather support my local guys anyway. So, steel should be here this week... next weekend, I hope to have the roof on and siding under way.

During the post setting, the machine squashed my carefully set and measured batter boards so we had to hurridly locate the front posts. As luck would have it (discovered while I was installing the strapping today) the building is not square (out by probably 2-4"). The roof is 18' wide, sized for 6 - 36" sheets of tin, each 16' long. I'm not sure how I'm going to compensate for the out of square on the roof now.

Thanks for looking at my little project. Thoughts, observations and suggestions are always welcomed. Cheers!

As (good) luck would have it, the order was not yet being processed by the manufacturer so I'm getting the tin sheets 1' longer. I'll align the sheets with the sides of the roof and trim the excess from the front/back after it's all up. A bit of a PITA but at least it's a salvageable error.

How well do the pneumatic tin snips work? I'm thinking that I'd just snap a chalk line and run the snipper down the line (while desperately hanging onto the edge of the roof, screaming like a little girl and hoping I don't slide off....). Suggestions for a good tool (that will see very occasional use)?

Lots of work done to the shed thus far. The weekend of the 14th, I finished the strapping and my Dad came over on Sunday to help me get the roof on. Translation: I'm a chickenshit when it comes to heights, so he did the roof work, I simply helped manhandle the sheets into position. The things he was doing up there....

Anyway, it started to rain (of course), so I called the job at that point. The tin was on and screwed down enough that it wasn't going anywhere... it can always be finished later.

I used 2x6 PT boards laying flat on the ground as a base for the siding boards. Notched 'em out, coated 'em in creosote (the exposed parts after cutting), screwed on cleats and tacked 'em to the posts. Lower girts were then installed and attached with angled brackets to give the side walls a bit more rigidity.

The following weekend (of Nov 21st), I got the west side siding supports under the roofline in place and some blocking in place around the beams. The east side is yet to do but I wanted to get some siding boards up. Here's how she stood, ready for the first siding boards:




Roof job is still not complete, but by the end of the day Sat, I had the first siding boards up. Sunday was mostly a writeoff, but did manage to get the siding boards done down the side and halfway down the back. Doesn't seem like a lot of progress... can't remember if I had something else on the go Sat. or not.

The next weekend, my Dad came by and finished up the roof. Once the edges were sawn off to a consistent overhang, you'd be hard pressed to tell that there was a screwup in the construction!

I decided over the week that I wasn't going to put the wood in the portion of the shed that I'd sided... I wanted much more airflow, so I returned to my original plan of using PT lattice as siding for the woodshed portion. A bonus, actually, is that the west side is now not exposed, meaning, I won't have the rain and snow driving into the woodpile. Just the east and north sides were given the lattice treatment, the south side (the door side) I'll leave open. Downside to this flipflop is that I had to move the center girts to the other side of the pole. Oh well.

On Sat, buddy and the young lad came out as well and we got most of the woodpile moved in (I moved the last of it after they left). As we had snow forecast, I really wanted it under cover, so I'm very happy that is done!

Sunday, I got the garden shed door opening framed up, some more boards fitted in the back corner, notched around the beam and got things ready for front siding. No pics from last weekend, unfortunately.

This weekend, I scrounged around the various mills and came back yesterday afternoon with the last of the boards I'll need. Door opening is 5' wide, so will go with two 30" doors. One mill I've used in the past has a fancy dancy machine that can put a tongue and groove in the wood. I was going to go that route till I received a call back from another mill with better prices. Dollars rule supreme right now, so went with the cheaper option. I'll use the router to cut some rabbits in the door boards to create a seal that should be nearly as good as TnG would have been (and save the weight of additional battens on the doors).

I got the verticals installed either side of the door (including ripping two 12' boards on a tiny Craftsman tablesaw - there's some fun!) before I lost the light. Today, got the front sided and started on the battens! Ran out of nails so had to make a flyer to town for more.

In the first pic, if you look down the side, you'll note the pattern of knots repeats. These were boards I'd had sawn from a big ol' pine I took down last year when I put the tower up. Not gonna burn pine in the woodstove and I had no other use for the log (I even called some local loggers; none were interested in picking up one pine log). So, might as well extract some value from it, I figured (got 21 1x10x11' boards). Half a dozen of the boards got quite mouldy from being stored (thought they had enough airflow, guess not). I'll have 'em planed and cleaned up one day for another project.





As we're forecast to have 5cm of snow tomorrow, I evicted some of the lawn equipment to the shed and moved all my nice dry boards 'n battens inside the shop. Nice to finally get that stuff outa there!

I'll be trying to get the doors built this week and hopefully installed by next weekend. Looks to me like there's just one board on the east side to install (another beam notcher), some pieces of trim for the tops of the siding boards and the last of the battens. I think by then, I can proclaim it done enough for this year. I'll probably stick a fascia board on next year and depending on how much snow infiltration I get, maybe some soffiting around the garden shed side.

Cheers!

great job. I love the ventilation using the slats. Looks like it was cost effective too using the trees on your lot.

Does your lawn equipment survive the winter in unconditioned space? Keeping the rain/snow off of it goes a long way toward keeping it in good working order, but I'm wondering if the cold doesn't have an adverse effect on the seals, gaskets, carb floats, needles, etc.? We don't get much snow in Alabama. It also only gets down to the 20's F at the lowest, averaged from year to year.

The cold won't affect lawn equipment. Just drain the gas in the fall and let it sit until spring - that's what all us northerners do every year.

Looks good, I'd like to have my wood under cover something like yours.

The only thing different I would have done was run the lattice up level to the top of the door on the east side. I'd finish the rest of that side off with vertical boards and batten like the rest of it.

Thanks guys! I reckon I saved probably $200 by cutting my own poles and using boards from one of my trees. Not much compared to the total cost of the thing (around the $1500 mark, including backhoe time and two loads of fill) but a dollar saved is a dollar earned.

NUTTSGT: I had thought of that too. The lattice is just screwed on so the upper pieces are easily removed if I want to do that. The only reason I would though, would be to provide a bit more shelter (since that side is not seen from the house). We had a snowfall here yesterday (and a good dumping coming tomorrow) and there was a bit blowing in... we'll see how it goes over the winter.

I don't bother even draining the gas from the yard equipment... I put stabil in my gas when I buy it and leave it at that. Whatever's in the machines stays there till next spring. The first start of the year always involves a few more cranks than usual, but that's the worst of it.