Building my own shed

Mar 21, 2008 38 Replies

I used to have that problem with doing estimates for decking. Spent a little time mucking about with Excel & now I have a spreadsheet that does it for me. I just enter the overall dimensions, direction of boards & joist spacing & it works out the joist run, board run & number of screws required. Since done another one for laminate flooring quotes. Works out number of packs, length of edge strip etc.

My last 'shed' building project was a play house to keep the kids out of the way. I think I may have over-engineered it slightly...

formatting link
only have a fixed chop saw but that was invaluable in increasing the speed of construction. Besdies that the most useful tools were the Makita drill/driver and impact driver - took a lot of the effort out :-)

Cheers

Mark

Brilliant Mark - what a Dad!

I'm building something similar for my granddaughter, but I'm not sure I have the sizes & proportions right.

Could you post the dimensions please? W x D, H of platform & H overall?

Cheers

The base is about 8ft square. The platform is at 4 foot of the ground and the whole thing is 9 ft high at the front sloping down to 8 ft at the back. Luckily our neighbours are very understanding and don't seem too bothered at living next door to a watchtower - but I didn't put any windows at the back just to preserve the neighbours privacy.

Hope this helps

Mark

Here is the framework for my effort, inclement weather & excessive handymanning have delayed things.

formatting link
around 1200mm x 1200mm at the base.

I reckon the top 'half' is too tall, so I'm planning to trim it down a bit. Can't now reduce the bottom 'half' easily since I glued & screwed it :-(

We had a framed table knapkin in the office with the circuit diagram (schematic) of a printed circuit board we had to design.

Geo

The Ten Commandments were carved out on a tablet of stone....look what happend there!

Sun is shining and you're prattling on here,so whats stopping you now?

I do hope its secured into the ground? don't want little medway handy people flying about the garden in heavy gales.

It isn't bloody well shining here mate - its snowing! I'm waiting for a break in the weather to go & look at the fence panels that came down last week.

It isn't yet, but it will be. It survived lasts Mondays gales without moving though. Claddings not on yet of course.

Tis a good job Noah didn't have that attitude...otherwise we'd have been all washed up.

Do it by hand and get some ruddy exercise.

Good grief. One cheap cross cut saw is all you need.

Hahahaha Hahahaha, I like people like you...given the opertunity of the loan of a sliding mitre saw and they'll jump at the chance to do the job with it.

Funny you should say that. I've got a decent sliding mitre saw, but sometimes it is just too much damn trouble to use it, so I use the cross cut saw instead. Lately I've been cutting some 5 metre lengths of 3 x 2" and it is quicker to cut it by hand than keep manouvering the saw and wood into position each time. Swinging 5 metre lengths of timbers around in a room only slightly bigger is a tad awkward to say the least.

Soon I've got a lot of 5 metre lengths of 6 x 2" to cut to size but it will be a toss up whether to use the hand saw or power saw. I don't know which will be the lesser of the two evils - the manual sawing or trying to balance and use the sliding mitre saw in an awkward place (balanced between ceiling joists).

If you find its a lot of trouble using it why did you buy it?

Tell me how and what do you use to saw the wood on if you dont use the mitre saw?

With a hand saw I can take the saw to the timber. With a chop say I have to take the timber to the saw.

I use the chop saw on shorter lengths of timber when I've got a lot to do. It's great for that. It's just too awkward to use with long timber in a confined space and lots of obstacles.

Horses for courses as they say.

the complete back and side wall of my shed as individual modules.

12mm ply, 3x2 timbers at 600mm centres, wool insulation, and 25mm oak cladding on the outside. The two metre side walls were f***ing heavy, and the 3 metre back wall was F***ING HEAVY!

Conclusion - I should have left the cladding off until the walls were roughly in place.

Sounds like a limitation of the workspace rather than the saw then...

Sounds a bit like my last workshop:

formatting link
that one was an interesting learning exercise, and did yield a very nice building to work in.

Came in handy over the last couple of days as I had to do a rescue job on one in the new garden that was left to rot by the previous owners. Anyway, having given it a new floor, roof, and replaced some of the back and one side with timber salvaged from the original floor (the half that was not rotten) we have something better than the original or indeed better than you could order as a shed kit.

Came to the conclusion that I am a big fan of "torch on" felt for this sort of job. Did a underlay coat, plus a top coat - only took a couple of hours to get both coats on (about 12m^2) using a F off big blow torch from machine mart.

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required