Postcards from a shed build…

[Onoff]

(And yes, looking like a bellend does help)

I think it's the way you're standing.

 

[Onoff]

I’m hoping to. I put that tyvek roof felt stuff underneath first which I was hoping would help with drippage in the likely event I haven’t got anything else up there by the time things get chilly.


I don’t know whether to be pleased with myself or slightly ashamed my brain has ventured into most of the above! I have a friend who is a builder back in my home town and I’ve rung him a couple of times to quiz him on things and in the end I think his words were ‘you aren’t building a house’ which i think is the polite version of its ‘it’s just a shed’!

I'd be doing all I can to make it as pleasant a place to work in, all year round as I could. Especially in winter and especially to encourage the kids to want to work in there. Wish I'd considered this 30 years ago with my old stable block cum workshop. I know people do wonderful things "on the drive" or in a single, unheated garage but I like my comforts.

I now lots of folk building passive esque houses and outbuildings so know a bit about insulation, air tightness, thermal bridging etc. It's relatively simple physics.

If you take your wriggly tin roof as the weatherproof covering in the diagram below, then later on if you insulate, put a vcl under the insulation.

In theory you will get some cold bridging down through the timber joists. You could mitigate this by adding a layer of say Celotex under the joists and foil taping all the joints. That can act as the vcl. Then a fireproof ceiling of course.

You want to allow air flow through the roof space to wick away moisture above the insulation. Your roof joist orientation might impede that. Counter battens would have been the way to go. Another thing I'm not sure is if your tin roof overhangs enough? I'd worry about driving rain getting in and not being ventilated away.

Vermin. My BiL has pretty much the same profile wriggly tin on the same white breathable felt. (He used self milled tree trunks rather than telegraph poles mind). The rats and squirrels have gotten in and made nests. It bulges the felt and eventually tears it. That and the noise of them up there undoing all the hard work. I think you can get mesh eave closers? Allows venting but the mesh is small enough to prevent wasps etc.

This isn't a downer btw just pitfalls from experience and to mitigate if you can.

What do I know, lying on the sofa in the lounge as I couldn't sleep. Listening to the rat/squirrel running up inside the wall to the loft. My lounge walls are woodchip paper, on 1/4" hardboard, on 1" roof battens. My lounge floor is 5/8" non flooring grade chipboard. Think this is only in films?

Think again!

https://flic.kr/p/2cSVcDW

https://flic.kr/p/2bRiCFs

 

[Martin Hocking]

Thanks onoff that’s great advice, I haven’t got time to reply properly this morning childrens birthday parties and usual weekend admin are going to have to come first. I’ll have a go later.

It’s nice to have someone to talk to about this stuff, everybody I know has had enough of me going on about it!

I’ve not seen the money pit I have a feeling some of it might seem all to familiar! I’m glad your floor problem was downstairs. Yikes!

 

[magnet]

You're doing a grand job there. Keep at it

 

[Onoff]

Thanks onoff that’s great advice, I haven’t got time to reply properly this morning childrens birthday parties and usual weekend admin are going to have to come first. I’ll have a go later.

It’s nice to have someone to talk to about this stuff, everybody I know has had enough of me going on about it!

I’ve not seen the money pit I have a feeling some of it might seem all to familiar! I’m glad your floor problem was downstairs. Yikes!

Put it this way, your shed is better built than my house.

 

[Martin Hocking]

Put it this way, your shed is better built than my house.

But not as well as your cat tree house, I’ve just read that thread. Lucky cat!

 

[Martin Hocking]

More postcards.

Extra help was needed to finish the base…

 

[Martin Hocking]

Concrete is covered in some detail in this thread:

Concrete pad thread

It didn’t go as well as hoped but once it cured the buildings appeal started to show for the rest of the family…if you build it they will come.

 

[Martin Hocking]

I played table tennis in it for a couple weeks having won a table out of the local auction for 37quid.

I finally summoned the motivation to do more digging and concrete.




Repeating the three stages six times was quite a lot more of a faff than I realised it would be. I should learn to lay blocks.



They lip over the dpm by an inch for reasons that are too boring to explain and will probably mean the shed will collapse imminently.

 

[Martin Hocking]

Clamps helping people with no mates build stuff since…


A wall!

 

[Martin Hocking]

Tiredness can kill, or worse make you really stupid…

 

[Martin Hocking]

If you build it they keep coming!

 

[Martin Hocking]

My terrible quantity surveying skills and the wondrous thing that is the cover sheet that means you get two extra sheets when you order wriggly tin meant I had enough for the back as well, just to really ramp up the condensation!

 

[Martin Hocking]

More osb and things are getting more shed like…

 

[Martin Hocking]

While it’s a terrible example of how to make one, my diy toe jack became my best friend during the boarding.

 

[Martin Hocking]

Ghosting my own thread as usual…

I’ll try and pick up where I left off…

Windows and doors happened…


You may not be able tell (I couldn’t for a couple of months) but this window is upside down! D’oh!

Door next (even I couldn’t put this in upside down!)


Toe-jak ‘Who loves ya baby!’

I did this bit wrong, I should have bed the door down in a big squidge of silicone…


But sort of redeemed myself by making a doorstep out of part of one of the windows I had to chop down…



To date this hasn’t fallen off or leaked, and is probably the only decent bead of silicone I have ever done!

 

[Martin Hocking]

After this motivation on the shed front took a bit of a dip as I managed to move all the stuff I had in storage out and rammed it in the shed. So in many ways the Sun went down on the shed for a while and this is how I left it for the winter



Hoarding has many facets and can be called many names, but I refer to it as ‘stuffocation’.
This is a taste of what it looked like…
(It’s a screen grab of a video so poor pic but you get the idea…I really need to sort myself out)


I wasn’t totally fed up, but I had a lot of other stuff to do so things went on hold for a while.

Motivation is a funny thing, and I nibbled away at a few things over winter and early spring, but I think I’ve managed to get more done on the shed in 6 weeks between April and May then I had in the previous 6 months…

 

[Martin Hocking]

Things started with sorting out the minor security issue that was the other doorway, the fence panel had done sterling service over the winter and kept a surprising amount of water out…


A slight improvement…


A slight fast forward, but I haven’t got a picture of the door pre cladding…


Covering the hinges was an attempt at security but is probably something I will swear about in the future!

 

[Martin Hocking]

Cladding happened as you can see above…I used strip of osb instead of batten because I didn’t want the cladding sticking out further than wood at the top, although thinking about this now it probably wasn’t actually a problem to worry about…



I don’t like woodwork very much, I always have a feeling I’m doing it wrong…


although with this bit which took about half an hour to cut, it was obvious to me that I was!


I used a circular saw for the second one, and as expected it was rubbish!

Progress at last…