Purchased Workshop

[ByronBlack]

A little tale of warning if anyone is thining of buying one of the Walton workshops from the company: Garden Buildings Direct (Kybotech).

I orderd a 16x10 workshop a week ago (after deciding I didn't have the time to build my own) it cost £869 and was offered with 5 days delivery - I phoned to check this and as assured it was the case.

After nearly a week of phoning their delivery advice department, and getting fobbed of each time saying I should get a call to advise on delivery, I decided I had enough and phoned the manufacturers (Walton) direct.

The workshop is currently out of stock, and they won't have them ready for atleast the 25th of september, nearly a whole month since my first order, and there is a long list of other customers who are currently ahead of me in the pecking order.

So I phone kybotech up and complain, they have the next size up (20x10) in stock and ready for next day delivery, however it's £170 more, I told them I wasn't interested in paying more, they couldn't offer it to me at a reduced priced and instead offered my some crappy 'stronger' lock if I paid the extra!! The cheek of it!!!

So I cancelled my order and got a refund - their service is shocking!! They took my money even before they checked the stock levels, and advised me wrongly for over a week, and it seems they would rather lose my business of £869 than upgrade me to the cost of £169

So, anyone else who is thinking of buying a Workshop through that company, please be very wary!

Looks like i'll be building it myself afterall! (Cue lots of annoying questions from me about building methods and materials).

 

[Mcluma]

Byron

Sorry to hear of your mishap.

but by building it yourselve you will have more fun / pleasure / satisfaction / quality /money / friends / coffee / less time / more beer / and a whole better lay-out

now you can build what you want, and not what is on offer.

 

[ByronBlack]

Aye, that is a positive, but the big negative is that I have to make an office suite and built-in wardrobes out on the deck under a gazebo - something I was hoping to avoid.

BUT as you say in the end i'm sure i'll end up with a better built and stronger workshop that i'll be happier with

 

[Barry Burgess]

BB the weather is in your favour at present - get going before it changes
Barry

 

[ByronBlack]

Aye Barry - thats the crux of my problem, so much to do and so little time to do it!!

To speed things up, does anyone know where I can find a good book or explanation on building sheds/workshops.

The two things i'm currently not sure about are how to fix the walls to the floor, and how to fix the roof on.

 

[engineer one]

having taken down and rebuilt a couple of 16 footers within the last couple
of years, i am not sure the made ones are the right way to go, but they
all use carriage bolts .

a couple of months ago one or other of the uk mags did a couple of
articles, and also i believe so did GWW, you might try their site.

basically though a lot depends upon what you use as a floor.
we rebuilt the shed on 6/8 railway sleepers to get decent air circulation,

seem to remember the perimeter and floor sides were 2x2's probably
treated, the floor was panelled with t&g.

build a frame wall for the sides and ends, rather like a stud wall,
and cover it with treated t&g.

roof trusses are probably 6x4's and i think pitched rooves are better than
flat ones.

good luck

paul :wink:

 

[mailee]

My workshop was the subject of an article in GWW last month. It was homebuilt by myself and the main structure was up in under two weeks. If you need any help advice please pm me I would be glad to help.

 

[engineer one]

mailee, that's not a workshop its a bl***y house :twisted:

well done, looks really good

paul :wink:

 

[mailee]

Ha ha, cheers Paul. I am a bit proud of it and it is a great workshop for me too.

 

[ByronBlack]

mailee - nice work!! What are the external dimensions?

 

[SketchUp Guru]

My shed is a hovel compared to Mailee's but here's an idea of how I built mine. In my case it isn't for a workshop but rather all the stuff normal people would store in their garage besides the car. I have the entire garage as my shop and the cars stay outside.

The walls sit on top of the T&G plywood flooring and are lag screwed to the rim joists. The floor joists are on joist hangers. I built my trusses from scratch and glued and nailed plywood gussets on both sides. they are attached to the top of the wall with what we call hurricane clips. By setting the cross member of the truss on the wall, I avoided the neccessity of cutting the birdsmouths in the rafters and I got a bit more storage. There is a central post running vertically between the peak and the cross member.

I ended up cutting notches in the rafters at a couple of places on the top surfaces to take a 3/4" thick stringer. One was positioned to coincide with the seams in the sheathinh. These support the sheathing flush with the top of the rafters.

The wall sheathing extends below the bottom of the wall and the siding covers it entirely.

There's a facia board applied to the rafter tails and then a ventilated aluminum soffet added horizontally between the fascia board and the wall.

Hope that helps.

Hurricaine clips:

 

[ByronBlack]

Hi Dave

Thanks for the explanation - not sure I followed all the building jargon, but your diagram has helped me visualise it, and I like your idea of resting the truss joist on the wall plate to avoid cutting birdsmouths.. the hurricane brackets look useful too as I was wondering how to attach the rafters to the wall plate.

Currently, i'm thinking of using 18mm Marine ply for the floor - will that be strong enough? This will be sitting on top of a timber 6x2 tanalised frame ontop of a concrete base.

Also, how do I work out my rafter length? the height of my walls will be 2.5meter, and the ridge board will be higher than that - not sure how to work out how hight it should be or what angle the pitch should be - anyone that can help me with this would definitly be in my ' to buy a beer book'

 

[SketchUp Guru]

Send me the dimensions of your shed and the roof details. Tell me what size lumber, too. I'll work out the dimensions. The floor in my shed is 3/4" (18mm) over joists on 16" centers and it is pretty strong. If I were going to use it for woodworking machines though, I'd probably go to joists on 12" centers.

If you want I could probably work out your entire shed in SketchUp.

 

[ByronBlack]

Dave, your a saint!!


Here's all the dimensions I have worked out so far:

Base (Tanalised 6x2)

6mx3m (1meter on the longside isn't being used for the shed) using 12" centres

Floor:
18mm Marine Ply (on top of a DPM) measuring 3m x 4.87m (basically 10ft by 16ft give or a take a few inches).

Side Walls:
2x4 Rough Sawn, made into two panels 8ft long (to make the full length of 16ft/4.87m) and 8 ft high - this so that I can clad using standard 6mm Chipboard inside and 6mm Marine outside. This will then be further clad by 150mm T&G Shiplap

Rear Panel:
Same construction as the side panel, but measuring 3m wide and 8ft high (same as side panels)

Front Panel & Door - again the same construction method, although the doors will be two 1m doors with 0.5m panels either side to make up the full width of 3m.

That is as far as i've got, I don't know how high to have the ridge board, or what angle to have the pitch, to be honest, I would probably just work with whatever is standard as I don't need a particularly tall roof as the hight of the walls are adequate.

 

[mailee]

Hi Byron, the external dimensions are 24' x 13' and the walls are 5'6" high, it is 9' to the apex of the roof. My roof beams are cut with birdsmouth's to fit over the wall plates. The main framework is made of 4X2 CLS and it is clad with ship lap cladding and insulated with rockwool. it is of course not big enough for all my tools and machines. Is any workshop? :wink:

 

[devonwoody]

Byron,
If you had taken delivery I bet half the timber would have been missing(because of knot holes) :shock:

 

[wizer]

hi Byron. I have been going through the same process of design recently. work starts at the end of September. You might glean some helpful info from my thread.

Good luck with the build.

 

[filsgreen]

BB, whatever you decide to do, make sure you enjoy the experience . When I built my 13x7 shed I couldn't wait to get it finished and now I am so jealous of you. It's the old story, if only I had have done this or that And of course Mailee is spot on with his observation that your workshop won't be big enough six months after you have built it. Here is a pic of my shed, the decking was not there when I built it and I wish I had built the shed the full width of that area. Build in haste, repent at leisure

Phil

 

[SketchUp Guru]

OK Byron, I understand most of the dimensions you gave and I have something to work with. I need a bit of clarification on a couple of points.

6x2 and 4x2 lumber: What are the actual dimensions? Here in the US a 2x4 is smaller than 2"x4" and they seem to get smaller every year.

DPM? What's that?

6mx3m: Is that the size of the concrete slab? Or is that the exterior dimension of the shed? What's the 1m part that won't be used for the shed?

re: Marine ply on the exterior side of the walls. You shouldn't need to do that if you are using T&G wood siding. I put OSB sheathing on my shed because I used vinyl siding. The siding is too flimsy not to be backed up. I think you should just build a boat with that marine ply. (This comes from a guy who wants but can't get marine ply locally.)

Is this shed going to be built immmediately next to another structure or will you have some space around it?

What sort of roof strikes your fancy? Single slope? Peak in the middle? Peak off center? One side higher than the other with a short wall of windows or vents? A gambrel roof?

Doors: Are you going to buy commercial doors or build them? I built mine but wish I'd thought about buying a door.

Windows? Any or none?

 

[wizer]

DPM = Damp Proof Membrane (Big sheet of plastic)