TIred

Built a shed yesterday.

***UPDATE: OK, I got a long nap in today and I'm ready to blog. (I really was tired, and only a few hours of sleep last night on top of two days of pretty hard work...)

Wednesday afternoon Sarah's dad and I drove out to the house in his truck with a pit stop at Lowe's. $1200 later I had all the materials I needed to finish the retaining wall (which you can see in the foreground in the pic at the top - more on that soon) and to build a shed. Hardipanel, lumber, cement, polycarb, etc.:


I had in mind something along the lines of the ModernShed - simple, sloped roof, 8x12, enough room to store the cords and cords and cords of firewood we have waiting to be cut and stacked, and someplace to keep all the stuff that's inside the house cluttering up all the closets right now (generator, tools, leftover cedar/bamboo/construction matls, etc.). I figured I could frame that myself.

Here's the spot - about 125' from the house as you come up the driveway, in the space that the well guys leveled to get their equipment in:


So Tony helped me a bit with the retaining wall and took off around 5. I spend the rest of the daylight hours excavating/leveling the footprint and digging the holes for the footers and pouring cement. (That sentence does not do justice to the amount of work that took place in those 4.5 hrs.) By Wednesday morning I was ready to start framing:


But I also had to finish getting the Hardipanel up on the retaining wall, which took most of the morning. Add in a trip over to Moorefield to get some more pressure treated lumber (I didn't have as much on site as I thought I did) and it's 4 o'clock before I really get going.








By Thursday afternoon I was finished. Nothing fancy; 8' on the front, with a 4' wide opening (not sure yet whether it'll get a door); 7' on the back; the triangle at the top will be open and screened to keep the air moving. Simpson ties for the joists:


Polycarb for the roof (keep the light coming in):


We're going to cut Hardipanel into 16" squares and paint them some fun colors and get them up as siding (like the recycled metal squares that were on the home on the cover of Dwell a few months back). Probably get some sheathing up on the inside to give it a little more lateral stability. I have to say it's a little more imposing than I thought it was going to be (up on the columns and with the framed floor and the joists on top it's a good deal taller than the 8' I was imagining it would be). But I think it's going to be fun to look at once we get the siding on. And I can finally start working on the pile of tree trunks on the side of the driveway...