Operation Seven-Day Shed (Day Five - Thursday)
A great deal of accomplishment! Perhaps this was because the weather forecast for the next several days is all RAIN RAIN RAIN. I can't work in the rain and it would be great if the shed were done before then.
I started by mounting the west wall in place. Yesterday I was worried about getting it to fit but, as it turned out, I needn't have been. It slide right into place and posed me no problem. After screwing it all down I checked the walls and everything was perfectly plum.
The east wall is the front of the shed, and that's where the door is going to be. After consulting with my brother on Wednesday I decided to make the door as large as possible. While I'm not actually making the door for a couple more days I needed to have a rough idea of how large to make it so I could construct the east stud wall. This ended up being very easy!
I decided to forego siding the east wall in order to focus my efforts on the roof. For some reason, way back on Sunday when I was designing the shed, I decided the roof would be the same size as the floor: 4' x 8'. That's not right! Even if I didn't have any eaves, the angle of the roof meant that it was going to exceed 4' in width anyway. This meant that I had too few 2x3s, too few shingles and insufficient sheathing! Well, it's not like I don't have a materials barn full of crap for just such an eventuality.
I decided to make the roof 6' x 8' (no eave over the door, ~8" eaves over the north and south walls). Because of the way I built the east wall I ended up having extra 2x3s. Actually, I had the exact, right number of 2x3 studs to build the roof frame just as I wanted. And aside from a handful of cut-off ends, I had no full studs leftover! After building the roof frame, I slide it on top of the shed and screwed it into place (which was a little tricky, because it kept wanting to slide off and crash into the alley!).
I was able to scrounge enough 1/2" OSB from the barn to finish covering the roof. I did have to stop and think about it, though, and mount the joists in the roof frame in unusual locations to provide good seams for the odd assortment of OSB and sheathing. It all worked out in the end and the roof ended up square and flat.
Finally, and in anticipation of the coming rain, I decided I should shingle the roof as well. I don't like shingling, but as I was only cover 32 square feet I wasn't too worried about it. Except that it wasn't just 32 square feet! A fact I had forgotten about, again, which meant that I ran out of shingles 2/3 of the way through. After a quick dinner, little Andy and I drove back down to The Home Depot so I could buy another bundle of shingles ($25) and, while I was there, three 8' 1x4s (#2 pine) with which to build the door. (Running total of all new materials cost: $259.02) My plan was to finish shingling after we got home so that at least the roof would be properly covered before the rain. Sadly, it was far too dark on the roof to get anything done. I couldn't even see the difference between the top half and the bottom half of a cut shingle!
So I packed up, cleaned everything away (I even stored a few things in the new, yet unfinished, shed!), put the Jeep in the garage and am hoping that the rain waits long enough for me to get out and finish the roofing tomorrow morning. It shouldn't take more than half-an-hour. Unfortunately, even now, at 11p, it's already starting to smell like rain.
//Serially