Building a Storage Shed ...... start to finish

stuff everybody's got stuff with Brooke and I and our two teenage kids we found ourselves in a position we have more stuff than places to put it when we bought this Old Farm 10 years ago there was a hundred-year-old Chicken Coop on the property and anything we wanted to keep under the weather that wasn't important enough to go in the garage ended up in the chicken coop but it was in such poor condition and poorly built to start with that It ultimately had to be tore down now every person hopes to reclaim the things they've lost due to time and today I hope to reclaim a little bit of storage space so come along with me as I build a storage shed on an old barn Foundation from the ground up start to finish my name is Dave Whipple and you're watching Bush radical [Music] it's been a year since we tore down the chicken coop all that's left is the old foundation and it's getting overgrown the foundation is one of the reasons we tore the chicken coop down in the first place it's in such poor shape the front three quarters of it though are fairly solid but the whole back quarter is basically crumbling off but sometimes you have to make do with what you got our family needs some storage space and although we don't have a good foundation to build on we have three quarters of a foundation to build on this was a 20 by 30 Barn Chicken Coop but now I'm going to build a 14 by 30 on it we're going to use the part of the foundation that's still in good shape and to make sure that the back of the foundation doesn't get any worse than it is we're going to bring in some equipment and backfill that whole area you're going to see just what I mean here in a second but first what we really need to do is we really need to dig this thing out the area around this slab has just turned into a jungle and it all needs to be cleaned out so we can see what we actually have and what we're actually working with if you grew up around Old Farms you've seen old foundations like this they invariably fall apart when they get older they were poor using not so much concrete but mortar and Stones generally this one's no exception where the wall of this Foundation is all busted up you can see there's rocks in there the size of grapefruits it doesn't make for a very solid foundation also you'll never find reinforcement in these Old Farm foundations [Music] so the idea here is not to polish a turd into a diamond which is impossible the idea is to stabilize the foundation that we have by backfilling it with a ton of material and building on the portion of the foundation that's still in pretty good shape which is the front two thirds now I'm going to remove all these old anchor bolts and get this wall prepped so I can put down treated plates and just like that what a difference a few hours makes it almost looks buildable now here's the part that hurts going to the lumber company get your wallet out I try to make up for high prices and lumber when it comes to roofing material I go to some Amish folks I know for the roof metal they're about 60 cents on the dollar compared to the big box stores and they generally have what I want when I want it [Music] it's always good to start a brand new project like this with a fresh saw blade even if you don't need it it just kind of makes everything go a little bit smoother and once I've got a nice fresh plate on there what I'm going to do is cut the wall studs for the front wall front wall is going to be seven foot long so I'm going to take 14 Footers which I can cut two studs on them I'm gonna take a seven foot stud to trim off an inch and a half for the bottom plate and another three inches for the double top plate once I have all the studs cut for the front wall then I'm going to go ahead and lay out the two sidewalls just to get my 14 foot Mark now why 14 well if I go any farther than that I'm going to run out of good concrete I'll make my marks get my area cleaned off I'm going to snap myself a nice chalk line now that we have a chalk line in place so we know where our back wall is going to go it's time to start laying out the plates the bottom and the top plate and then we can start building and standing walls in the bottom plate which is treated I'm going to drill some holes for anchor bolts and pretty soon we're going to be able to stand a wall now nothing makes you feel like you're getting something done like getting a wall together and getting it stood up once you actually see a vertical part of a building you really feel like you've made some progress one question I get asked all the time is why don't I just use an air framing nailer well the truth is I don't have one when I'm building something off grid I have a little Honda generator and that generator isn't powerful enough to run the air compressor that I own so 90 percent of the time when I'm building I can't run an air nailer anyway even if I had one now this building is just going to have a single pitch and all the water that comes off it is going to come off the front of the building so the bottom two feet of this wall is going to be treated plywood I'll probably end up covering that with metal like a metal roofing but I definitely don't want water from the roof splashing back against the building ruining the bottom of the wall I'm gonna let you guys in on a little secret I don't really like the paint it always feels like it's something that needs to be done that I don't want to do but I want to get onto something else like right now I really want to stay in this wall but I got two choices I can either stop what I'm doing and paint the wall first and stand it up or I can stop what I'm doing take an hour and a half to clear all the brush and flowers from out in front of the building then stay in the wall and then I can paint it anytime I want but there's so much junk to cut down and dig up in front of this building I think I'd be much better off to to just paint the wall before it stood now everything in construction is a sequence and right now I've got to get prepped for when this wall is stood up I can start lagging it down to the concrete now if you guys have ever wondered what I did before I started making videos I was a cement contractor I went into business when I was 24 years old in Fairbanks Alaska I started pouring concrete right out of high school so on one hand I'm not super stoked about building on such a janky old Foundation but on the other hand I love making do with what you have and seeing how good you can make something that's obviously less than perfect now here we're going to use my old rotary hammer I'm going to drill holes in the concrete and lag this wall down with red head expanding bolts now these are an ingenious invention you drill a hole you drive the bolt in and once you put a nut and washer on it and tighten it up it will grab into that concrete and you will never get it to come out it's a fantastic way to Anchor something down to concrete when you haven't already put anchor bolts in when the concrete is poured foreign foreign about you but I feel like we got something done today that's a good feeling day two now time to drive the most important nail of all the radio nail now we're going to stabilize this Foundation I hired my brother Ryan and we rented an old Bobcat from the local rental place he's a great equipment operator and knows a lot more about this stuff than I do so as I'm working on building the building Ryan is going to spend the day ferrying dirt from the back of the property and backfilling this crumbling Foundation that's what this foundation's needed all along the back side of the foundation never was backfilled [Music] foreign [Music] don't know what we ended up putting in there but I would guess 30 or 40 yards right up to the top of the old Foundation pack down and lifts I think that's about as good as you could do to keep an old crumbling Foundation like this from moving any further [Music] foreign we're on to the back walls lucky for me Brooke was home and I got help from her standing up these big ten foot walls [Music] and when it came to the second wall it had to be stood up and slid into place and that was a little bit off on my measurements brought over an oscillating tool a tool I had never used before that she had bought for a project that she's working on and with that oscillating tool she trimmed off just enough wood to make that wall slide right into place good help with good tools hard to beat [Music] after a couple days of rain time to get back at it on the menu today is putting on the rafters I need to get both of these walls perfectly plumbed so I can measure out my pattern rafter once I've got my pattern rafter cut out then I'm going to be able to cut all the other Rafters exactly the same hopefully by the end of today I'll have all the rafters up not only that but the bird blocking between the rafters for my marking tool I'm just going to use this chunk of three quarter inch plywood on a single pitch shed style roof like this I always make my Rafters the same I put the rafter in place and then I mark it using something as a spacer I could explain the process but once you see it it makes total sense now from there I just cut that initial rafter make sure it's exactly what I want and then I use it as a pattern for the other rafters now the rafters need to be in place before I can build the end walls and I definitely need one in the middle just to keep the walls from getting all Wiggly so I'm going to take my time and over the course of today I'll cut all these Rafters put them all in place nail them all off and then I can start those end walls now whenever I cut the bird's mouth out of a rafter I always finish the cup with a handsaw you could cut enough out with a skill saw to get that Bird's mouth to pop out but you will have cut into your rafter both directions way farther than you need to [Music] bird blocking is like paint it needs to be done when it needs to be done and a lot of times you just want to skip it but to go back and do it later it's best to get it done when it's time [Music] foreign [Music] walls takes patience studs got to be individually fit and cut so that it's Plumb and your plywood is going to land right in the center of it takes a bit of time one at a time [Music] as you could probably guess when it comes to end wall studs it's kind of a slow process I fit each one of these in individually and it took most of the afternoon [Music] the fall of the year when the colors are just starting to change that's the time of year to build something it's probably like football I suppose if it's really hot outside it's no fun and if it's really cold outside same thing but there is that time of year when it's just right thank you now I really feel like I've got something done because I'm ready to move on to the roof Chicken Coop 2.0 and it's going to just be a storage shed so it's not going to be finished or insulated or wired or anything else and that's great because that means when I finish the roof I'm finished foreign [Music] it's a good feeling when you can take off your hammer and just fill your pouch full of roofing screws because you know you got something done and you're getting close [Music] natural light is important in a building like this so I'm going to use two clear polycarbonate panels that'll let a lot of light in here [Music] now the most important part of any Roofing job is simple it's getting off the roof when you're done so I'm going to rig up a simple chunk of rope tie it to one of my studs and then lash it to a tow strap because that's what I have handy I'm not going to put my weight on this I just need something solid to grab as I back myself off the roof and onto the ladder got to have an exit strategy once your roof is done you'll you'll have to get off of it one time I almost jumped off a two-story roof into a spruce tree I had a rickety old wooden extension ladder and I had such a distrust of that thing and I absolutely despise extension ladders but it made sense at the time to jump off the roof and into a spruce tree and take my chances as opposed to take the ladder I'm glad I didn't because that was a stupid idea now it's time to clean things up am I done well are you ever really done I have to build a couple doors I have to figure out what I want to do at the top of the 10-foot wall I'm either going to fill it in with plywood or with clear poly panels [Music] and you've cut out a couple thresholds but at least this being a storage shed non-heated I can start storing stuff in it [Music] now all this space back here is really what this family's needed with two teenage kids Brooke and myself there's always stuff that needs to be put somewhere and there's not enough somewhere to put it not only is this shed going to really help us organize our lives but it's also going to make the yard a much nicer place to be get a lot of this stuff out of the weather and into some place where it's good safe dry storage thank you guys so much for hanging out with me through this building project my name is Dave Whipple and you've been watching Bush radical be radical eh see you soon [Music]

Channel: Bushradical

Views: 1,279,050

Keywords: Storage shed, shed building, small shed, amish shed, deer shed, cabin

Id: 2cW4v6zShNY

Length: 17min 54sec (1074 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 04 2022