Time to Shed

[MiniDave]

Whew it's been HOT lately! Since it's so summer out, temps in the high 90's and t-storms I decided to build a shed in my backyard! 

I've had a small 4X7 shed I built about 25 years ago but my ZTR won't fit in it, and I need a place to store all the car parts while I'm doing my hot rod project.....so the bride agreed to a new, bigger shed in the yard, with the idea that once the hot rod project is finished the other little shed goes away and we just have the one.

In order to make that happen the new one had to be large enough to hold all the yard stuff and her pots and such - she wanted the smallest one possible but once she started graphing out what was going in there even she realized it needed to be fairly large, so a 10X16 was chosen and ordered. A month later it arrived on the back of a trailer - well all the parts of it did anyway! It also came with a guy to put it together, but with weather changes, rainstorms and such I got drafted in to helping him......I don't mind construction - I've done plenty of it in the past - but jeebus it was hot out there!

It's all built now and I've moved the ZTR and a few other things in, but today I'll clean out the old shed, add some shelves in the new one and load all the car parts into the old shed.....that will be a day's work or more on its own!

He started on WEd, he wanted to work at night and I was fine with that, but one of the neighbors complained about the noise from the nail gun, so he had to pack it up by 10 pm, which presented a problem as the roof wasn't built yet and it was supposed to rain buckets that night, so we put the rafters up with screws and managed to get a tarp over it - that took till midnight. Didn't rain a drop that night or all the next day but the next night the rain came down - hard! He had covered it with a tarp but I went out Thursday morning and looked up from the inside - there were thousands of holes in his tarp! I went down to Home Depot and bought a cheap (? $50!) blue tarp and put it over his, Rose and I loaded all the remaining materials into the shed, put some old tarps I had over the door openings and that night it really poured! He couldn't work the next day so the project carried over another 2 days, but we managed to get the roof built and it all dried in before the next storm hit.

It's all built now and I've started moving stuff into it and out of my old shed, so I can load car parts into the small one. I still need to caulk and paint the new shed, but Rose is having a hard time making up her mind exactly what color to paint it. She hates the shed, doesn't like looking at it and she wants to make it disappear so to speak - blend in with the rest of the yard and trees and bushes and such, so it will probably be some sort of green. I don't really care what color it is, I'm just glad to have a place to get all the stuff stored.....

It's interesting that the pics don't really do justice to how big it is.....of course once it's full of stuff it won't seem so big either!

[BruceK]

Looks great!  I'm sure it's wonderful to have the clean new space.  Probably smells great inside there too!

[94touring]

You're going to have to post pictures of it fully loaded to the gills and a garage that has space to work in.

[MiniDave]

It's mostly full now, just need to move the genset into it, and Rose has stuff to move too, but I built her a separate set of shelves for her gardening stuff.

Once I get the small shed cleaned out then car parts will go in there.....that will help with the room in the shop, but it's by no means going to empty it out as a lot of what I have to store in the small shed is actually sitting outside on the ground ie: doors, bonnet and boot lid, suspension parts, subframes etc...

We probably could have gotten by with a 10X12 like she wanted, but I like having the extra room to walk around without having to move stuff out to get to other stuff and so on.

Next I need to get it caulked and painted, if she can just make a decision on the color. I also need to get some skirt boards around the bottom to keep out the bunnies, possums and so on......but I'm probably going to wait till fall to do that as I expect it to settle some and I'll need to shim it level again.

I'm also wondering if I should put some gutters along the long sides to direct water away from under it.....that also can wait till fall.

[MiniDave]

So a buddy owed me some money, so we worked out a deal where he came over and sprayed the shed in exchange. It sure went quickly, 2 coats only took about 2 hours including touch ups. It helped that it was already primed and I had taped and papered off all the windows, so all he had to do was squirt it.

The last thing I need to do is make some skirt boards for the bottom, we already have bunnies and chipmunks making a home under it.....but it's going to be over 100* for the next week, then 90's for the rest of August, so that will have to wait till it cools off a bit.

The color is darker and more even than it looks in this pic, plus I touched up a few thin spots here and there. The idea was to make it sort of blend in with the background, grass etc......I don't know if we accomplished that exactly but no matter - it's done.

[94touring]

Looks good!  Now clear out that garage!

[MiniDave]

Got most of it done, but with the temps this high it's hard to work out there for long......had to send the pics in to keep the warranty in effect(???)

Don has shed envy now, he's thinking about putting up a small one to get the snow blower and some other odds and sods out of his garage, now that he's trying to park 5 cars in there!

[MiniDave]

Pups for scale.....so far I'm really liking having a place to keep the ZTR and all the other yard stuff. I still need to build something to hold all the shovels, rakes, weed whackers and so on......

[MiniDave]

The shed has worked out well, not only does it hold all the yard related stuff, but I built in some shelves for the bride to keep her gardening stuff too.

Plus too and also, it now holds a metric ton of Mini parts and pieces so I have more room to move around and work in the shop. If you're going to work in your garage I think a shed is a must - if we had munchkins all their toys and detritus could go in there too - again - garages should be for cars - not the entire household of goods.

When you see a garage door open in this neighborhood it's always stuffed full of boxes and crap - no room for cars - and all of these houses have full basements - I don't understand how the garage became the defacto storage bin and the cars are relegated to live outside, but that's the way it is around here....

I'm pleased that it hasn't leaked a drop inside either, even when it had 14" of snow on the roof.

I'm not sure what to do about all the animals living under it, they haven't caused any issues that I'm aware of, and all the trails of bunny, squirrel, possum and what have you give the boys something to sniff........however, we had a BIG coyote in the yard behind us yesterday, it looked really well fed too. It's curious because it was 10 am when I saw it and I thought coyotes were mostly nocturnal? That could be why we haven't been seeing many squirrels or bunnies lately. If I can get a screenshot off our cameras I'll post the pic....but for now the boys don't go out without one of us with them - especially at night.

We also have a couple of large owls living in the 'hood and boy howdy do they make strange noises when they're mating! 

[cstudep]

Probably not all that common (or welcome) to see a coyote in your part of the world. Around here they are everywhere, which is fine by me because I do like doing some coyote hunting. They generally are more active at night but it's not too uncommon to see them during the day as well. I hunt them at either time with about the same success.

Definitely a good call to not let the dogs out on their own for a while, they wouldn't stand much of a chance against one.

[MiniDave]

I've been seeing reports of coyote sightings in the neighborhood on the next door app.....so we knew they were about. The bride never lets the boys out at night without checking for "evildoers" as she says first.....and we put lighted collars on them so we can see where they are at all times. Even tho our yard isn't that big, there are a number of places where they can duck out of sight....

[MiniDave]

Coyote in the neighbor's back yard.....

[cstudep]

Looks like a fairly decent sized one too. Surely the city or something could find someone to set some traps? Obviously the way we deal with them up around here wouldn't work LOL

[MPlayle]

Something to realize about coyotes, they are known to cross breed with wolves and other canines.

The coywolf cross breeds can get almost as large as most full blood wolves.