Shed build WIP....... sort of

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damo8604

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Aldershot, Hants
In keeping with the ethos of this forum I planned to do a WIP as I progressed through my build, unfortunately I had a 6 week gap in between starting clearing the old shed and building building work I decided to wait until I had the finished project.

So...... setting the scene......

I had an 8x6 shed which although cheap, still cost me about £300. Once my tools were in and caving stuff there wasn't much room to get in there let alone do any woodwork.

Secondly, it was located at the bottom of the garden on an existing concrete slab that had either subsided or had been laid by someone without much attention to detail so the shed leaned over horribly, leaving a massive gap at the top of the door.

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I moved the Wendy house further up the garden and replaced the rotten balcony with some decking and gave it a fresh coat of wood preservative and got it looking pretty good for a 12 year old garden structure. I then set to evicting the rabbit from his winter home (7x7 shed), moved my tools into his home and disposed of the old shed. It was pretty tough going as I had literally no room in this shed, I had to pull half of the kit out to find anything, anyway...............

With the shed and wendy house gone, I dug the footings for a block wall that was going to act as 'posh shuttering' for the new slab and I smashed up the old concrete base distributing the rubble as much as I could, I still had about 3 tonnes to dispose of at my local recycling centre (I lost count of the number of covert car loads it took)

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I didn't take any photo's of building the wall, I was so ashamed! Suffice to say, if I ever need a brick wall built in the future, I'll get a pro in.

This phase had cost me about £320 in blocks, ballast, sand, cement and about £60 of tool hire, but at least I had a solid but unattractive base on which to pour my slab.

Experiencing the hard work and faff involved in mixing concrete, I decided to get a local firm to deliver 3m3 of ready mix to give me a 6in deep re-inforced 14 ft square base. I laid this at the beginning of August and then work stopped for the 6 week holiday as we had day trips out every weekend with the kids.

So I booked a weeks holiday to coincide with the children returning to school last week and with a little help from my father-in-law as muscle we started construction.

I laid out the excess concrete blocks to raise the structure from the floor and put squares of mineral felt on each of the blocks to act as a damp proof membrane for the bearers to sit on.

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I also invested in a secondhand Paslode IM350 which I now realize I couldn't has done without. I used 18mm OSB3 for the floor and nailed it directly to the 2x4s and here is the floor....

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Things were moving really quickly and after only a few hours, we were left with the floor down and 2 of the sides up. As I had started late on the Monday (I had to nip into work to file a VAT return in the morning) and the kids finished school at 3pm we decided to call it a day, happy with the rate we had progressed.

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Day 2 started well, I had managed to find a couple of double glazed units on Gumtree the night before for £10, unfortunately I couldn't remember the dimensions so had to guess the sizes of the apertures as the guy wasn't home until later that day. at the end of day 2 we had the basic skeleton of the workshop up, and with 3pm approaching we packed up before the kids came home.

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After 2 days of pretty rapid work, the build seemed to slow as there was a lot of fiddly bits with the window, noggins and general reinforcing. I had made the mistake of not spacing my uprights and rafters with enough foresight for leaving enough timber to screw OSB & PLY to, at the end of day 3 the windows were in and we had started cladding the front.

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Day four saw some more snagging and cladding, the missing cladding from Monday finally turned up with insulation and plywood sheets for the inside. By the time the kids got back from school it was starting to look like a shed with just the rear Gable end to clad and roof to go on.

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Friday was a busy day, rain was forecast for the Friday evening so I needed to get the roof on. The doors took a surprising amount of time to do, I used half lap joints and glued & screwed them. we worked until about 6pm that evening but I was happy with the end result.

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I'm still halfway through insulating and lining it internally, unfortunately I'm back at work now so will have to do a bit each evening this week. I'm planning on running an extension lead in there temporarily until I can get it wired up. My next steps are to make some workshop furniture (workbench/storage etc) but so far so good!
 
Nice solid Job. Keep that well painted and waterproofed and it will last a lifetime.:)
 
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