The woodshed is functionally finished! That means it now works as a woodshed and will keep our wood nice and dry all winter long. There's still quite a bit to be done, but this milestone is pretty important to me. I'm happy with the roof and the shingles now we've had a metric shit ton of rain in a 24 hr period. I'm starting to feel a little better about the posts and how it might hold up during wind.
Despite having a really bad cold I worked both days this last weekend to get it done. I put in all the pavers for the base. As you can see the last two rows are pretty wobbly since I wanted to get them done and can easily lift them up to level them out some other day in the future. The super heavy duty waterproof tarps from mytarp.com (slow to ship, no communication, but great tarps!) fitted pretty much perfectly. There's a 3ft overlap at the front which makes a pretty nice airlock to walk through when it's raining. It's really dark in there when the tarps are closed so I got a battery powered LED motion sensing light to try in there and see how that works. I'm still toying with the idea of running real power out to the shed. The floor is set up so the logs rest on those crescent shaped pieces and don't rest entirely on the ground. They also lean a little to the back and along the retaining wall to hopefully reduce the chance of the pile falling on me.
I also got more gutter to extend the previous 10ft to the full 12ft of the back of the shed. The current downspout location is temporary until I fit the siding on there. So what's left to do? Whatever's left might wait until next year, we'll have to see how time and the weather cooperates with me. I need to paint it. this is pretty high up on my list of things I'd really like to get done. It's a shame I didn't paint it before putting on the drip edge and the gutters, I can take the gutters off when I finally get time to paint it though. I also need to put some more redwood on the side posts and then route it so that it looks like the side of the house, then paint it red (even though it'll end up being covered by the tarps in the winter). In the summer I plan to take the tarps off and let the wood air out a bit.
While I was loading up the 1+ cord of wood we had stacked up a HUGE rat ran out of the old wood pile and was very upset to be losing his home. I was pretty careful after that. Didn't see any snakes at all during the whole process which was kind of a bummer.
There's something pretty satisfying about standing under a shelter you've made yourself, especially when it's raining outside.
I've just been adding more pictures to the same
gallery.
I have managed to damage 3 of the 5 fingers on my left hand so far. Since I'm more than three fifths of the way through the project I think I should be able to finish. It's been going pretty well. I framed up the roof and then slapped the roof on. Then after a fitful night's sleep, I realized the front (and back) edge just wasn't straight enough so I pulled off the roof boards and adjusted the middle planks to make the front and back straight. Now I've really nailed the roofing boards in place and even put the lower drip edge on. Now I just need two more days to felt and shingle the roof and it'll be pretty much done. The super heavy duty tarps that will make up the walls have already been ordered and then I'll need to set some kind of flooring so the wood isn't sitting directly on the ground.
Here's how it looks so far. Actually this picture is from when the front and back edge were a bit bowed due to those middle two front to back pieces being a bit too long. I've also installed some flashing on the back posts and will also put it on the front posts too. I'm also going to coat the outside edges of those posts in redwood with some grooves cut in with my router to mimic the redwood siding of the house. During the winter you won't see the fancy fake siding, but in the summer I plan to have the tarps off to let the wood season better.
I'm building a woodshed where the old woodpile was. First I had to move all the old wood aside, then I've had to dig out a colossal amount of dirt to get close enough to the property line to insert a retaining wall. This is as far as I've got so far, but I hope to make huge strides in the next week. The last week of my two month sabbatical from work.
As you can see from this picture if I'm to continue this retaining wall all the way to the garage I have quite a ways to go! but I can do it bit by bit. The pickup truck only really handles 30 blocks at a time so that's a nice limiting factor.
Here's my plans for the shed, subject to change of course but I hope it ends up looking like that.
