Tag: shed

Building the Shed Part III

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn WorkshopLeave a comment

Remember this thing? Probably not. I started building this 10′ x 14′ shed late last year. I waited nearly two months for the deck boards to come in from Home Depot, but by the time they came in, it started to get cold for the year.

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Fast forward six months, I decided to get off my duff and start building the shed again. I went back to Home Depot and bought a bunch of 2 x 4’s and a few 2 x 6’s and framed out the walls.

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My wife bought a nice old sixteen pane window for the shed a couple of years ago and we decided to place it on the side of the shed. I measured it and framed it out making sure there was a little gap on all sides so it would be easy to install.

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The front of the shed will have two more old windows with big double doors in the middle. I laid the window in the frame to see where I wanted the header. We decided that all the windows and the tops of the doors will be placed at the same height.

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My buddy Dave came over in the morning one Saturday so that we could raise the walls and build the rafters for the roof. The four walls went up with ease and everything was plum and square. Good measuring on my part I guess.

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After we installed the top plate to the wall, we played around with angles for the roof until decided to use the 3′, 4′, 5′ Pythagorean theorem method. We cut a test rafter to see how it looked and cut out the birds mouth so that the rafter would fit on the walls nicely. I wanted the rafters to hang over the walls about one foot.

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Cutting the angles for the rafters was easy since there was a 31.62 degree measurement on my sliding compound miter saw. We cut all the wood and made seven rafters in about an hour.

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Since the the total length of the roof was 16′ long, we ended up making another rafter that sat in the middle of the shed so that the OSB plywood would have something to nail to at the end.

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I trimmed the OSB plywood to the proper size on the second row so that I would have about a 2″ gap at the top for a ridge vent. We got a boatload done in one day and I was happy I finally started to build the shed again.

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Building the Shed Part II

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Workshop5 Comments

It’s been months since I updated about the shed I’ve been building. I originally broke ground on it back in September. I hadn’t done anything on it for weeks because my wife and I didn’t want the floor of the shed to be plywood. While looking at sheds that Weaver Barns make, we saw that they used a 2 x 8 tongue and groove pressure treated lumber flooring. We both loved it, so we searched around to see who carried it.

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I have a friend who works for Universal Forest Products (UFP), so I asked him if he knew anything about it. He told me it’s called V Groove Decking, and that he could get it for me since Lowe’s nor Home Depot carried it in stock. Well, after waiting a couple of weeks, I knew that was a dead end. Anita found that Menard’s carried it in stock, but the boards were 20 feet long and about $30 a board. We really didn’t feel like driving 20 miles to Menard’s to pick them up so I went to Home Depot down the street and asked how much it would be to special order from them. The price was a lot cheaper, but it would take three weeks to get them delivered to the store. I wasn’t in a real rush so I went ahead and ordered them.

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Well, three weeks turned into six as I found out that UFP doesn’t manufacture the boards, only treats them. They were waiting for the manufacture to make the boards which caused the delay. What really sucked was that Cincinnati had mild weather during that time and there were many weekends where the temperature rose to 70 degrees. All I could do was stand in my dining room looking back at the frame wishing my boards were in.

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I finally got the board in early December, dragged them out to the base and laid them out to see how much overhang I had on each side. Luckily I ordered the right amount of boards as I had only a couple of inches overhand on each side.The boards were 16 feet long so I had a foot of overhang on each of the long sides.

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The best part was that the floor was completely level on all four sides with the floor laid down.

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I took my time and went through the boards to find the straightest board and screwed them to the base crown up so that they were as straight as possible. I screwed three screws per joist which totaled over 600 screws used to attach all the deck boards.

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The last boards were the most warped so I grabbed a couple of 6 foot long pipe clamps and squeezed the boards to the rest of the decking and screwed them down.

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Once all the boards were attached, I trimmed off the excess with a circular saw and flush cut them with a router bit. Thankfully Christmas Eve was warm as I was working on the shed in only a t-shirt.

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Hopefully we’ll have a mild winter as the next part is to start framing the walls. I work outside during the winter building displays for my day job, so as long as the temperature is over freezing, I’ll be fine. I just doubt I’ll be able to get any of my friends to help me.

And so it Begins- The Shed Part 1

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Workshop4 Comments

I tore my old shed down one fall day and told myself that I would build a new one in the spring. That was seven years ago. Well, after seven years, I finally got my act together to build a new shed. One of the biggest issues in building it was how to build it level with a yard that is sloped downhill. I considered using deck blocks, but after watching a few YouTube videos, I decided to build a framed base.

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My wife, Anita, and I decided how big of a shed we wanted and where to put it in the yard. We opted for a 10′ x 14′ and laid it out in the yard with stakes and strings. I then used a line level to see how far off the ground the right side of the shed would be in the air. It’ll end up being about two feet in the air on the back right side which won’t look bad once we plant some shrubs around the shed.

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After we went to the home center to pick up the lumber. I cut and screwed the 2×6’s together into a 10′ x 14′ box. I measured corner to corner to make sure the box was square then attached boards on all four corners to keep it that way. I then grabbed some spray paint and sprayed the ground at the corners to show me where to dig my posts. After I dug the four holes 30″ deep, I stuck the 4×4’s in the ground and used clamps to hold the box to the posts. Then using a level, I leveled the box on all four sides, held it in place with clamps, then concreted the posts in place letting them dry over night.

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In the morning, I bolted the box in place with 3/8″ galvanized lag screws using four screws on each post. I then marked where my stringers would be and dug holes for two more posts in the middle of the shed so that the floor won’t sag.

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Attaching all the stringers and covering the base of the shed with 3″ deep of gravel stone with landscaping fabric underneath, the shed has a nice base. Now I need to go back to the home center to pick up more lumber.

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This is a drawing of the shed I designed. We already bought three old windows for the shed last year, so I incorporated them into the design. We’ll see how close the final shed will look to this drawing.