Blather

After the success of making my trailer's claustrophobic bedroom into a comfy sleeping area, my next big project was to work on the garden shed. Why? Because it's been there awhile. And I want to make this house better. So ....




Here's a quick look inside- the studs are not exactly uniform, but they work well enough. That hole is for a heating duct that the previous owner intended as ventilation but I think that was a poor reason to cut a hole in the floor of an otherwise usable floor.

Before the floor was nice and nearly white, it was black with mold and grunge and rot.






Here's my home-made skylight. One-inch hardware cloth with fiberglass cloth and boat resin over the top. Not only does my skylight fit the precise opening, it's a lot cheaper. Now it looks like I left the lights on all the time. The white floor helps, too.





Here's the final result- the concrete piers provide eight inches of distance between my wooden shed and any ground bugs. Note the floor jack in the trench. That's the flat-nosed shovel I used to make a nice, flat trench for the floor jack to sit in.








You can tell it's a five-sided shed. The sliding door is on one corner, making the shed's missing corner into a useful entry. The three piers are along this short wall because I anticipate stepping on this section a lot. There's the outdoor light that my son disconnected. The pipe touching the wall holds wires that he'll connect back up after we bore a new access hole. Down at the left front is the radio I had in my office in Embassy Bangkok. At the right is the can't-stop-me ivy. The sliding door has an artistic bit of driftwood nailed to the front; hanging on the nail is a possum skull with a few vertebrae attached.




This is the far back corner, looking towards the ivy-clad chain link fence. That bottom board looks bad; it needs replacing. Just beyond that loose brick was a couple of square feet of ground that had some huge ivy stems. In addition to the few loose boards to replace, I'll need to spend some resources on stain or fence paint for the weathered boards.







The roofing felt gets stapled around a corner. I started on the top, bent the paper over the edges and stapled what I could.





To the right you see the quasi-hip roof covered with 30-pound felt paper. I have nothing but respect for roofers now.






The roof is 3/4 done. You can see the mitering I did over the slanted part of the roof. Also visible is the home-made skylight- one inch steel mesh covered with fiberglass cloth and resin. Lots of that Henry roof repair from the can went around the edge between the roof and the skylight.






This is the other part of the shed before it gets the top coat. Mitering kept the bumps down caused by a flat center with five sloping hips around the edges.

I sat on the top while Kimmie did the flat facia boards.





This tired old garden structure came with the house. When we bought the house in 1995, the house inspector had nothing good to say about parking a wooden structure so close to the ground. In the intervening dozen-plus years, the shed hasn't elevated itself.

I had an image of what I wanted- a clean shed, in the air a bit. The operative words were "clean" and "in the air." I began the nasty work. I took everything out- a couple of darkrooms, some plastic toys that my small son played with, shelves, a beer fridge, some gym lockers, more shelves and this huge wine rack. While unscrewing the shelves, my foot went through one corner of the rotted plywood floor. I got out my Sawzall and cut out some of the bad floor. (Nothing works as well as a Sawzall when you need one.)

When I pried up the cut-out plywood, I found a gazillion old plastic bags and a quantity of paper shred. After I removed a couple of armloads of plastic bags, a possum scared the crap out of me when he stuck his head up, as if to say, "Hey yoo! I'm livin' heah!" As the adrenalin died down, I collected all the trash and plastic bags and put 'em in the trash can for the Monday morning pickup.

On Saturday, I drove to Castro Valley Lumber, a place that's wonderful because it *smells* like a lumber store. A bit dark, but you know where you are- a place where lumber and concomitant accessories are the main and only commodities. The knowledgeable, helpful but slightly gruff proprietor sold me a sheet of 3/4" CDX plywood. I glued and screwed some cleats to hold up the replacement floor. I laid the plywood on the floor and used the hole as a template. The new floor went in with Grabbers and I Bondoed any evidence of my less-than-perfect carpentry. After dinner, I sanded the Bondo and the entire floor and put two coats of paint on the floor. It's now a sort of warm purplish light grey.

Sunday was the day to chop away the neighbor's feral and ferocious ivy that grows on the cyclone fence between our yards. At my age, chopping unwanted vegetation gets exceedingly old all too soon. I was covered in cobwebs, sawdust, funky grunge from the unknown varmints who'd made their home in my shed and dripping sweat. All in all, I needed a shower pretty badly! But before I could rinse off the nastiness, I had the added pleasure of scraping ivy from the external boards of the shed- the ivy spanned about 18 inches to the shed and had been growing into the side of the shed for a few years. Being able to walk around the back of the shed was a modest goal that I made impulsively and when I got to that point, I stopped chopping and lopping and chopping and raking and lopping and raking and ... well, you get the picture. Boy, that shower felt goo-oood!

I took a small break over Memorial Day, going to Ardenwood Farm with my son and his girlfriend for the Victorian experience. What a nice place that is! Gonna have to go back, the next time with a charged (not flat) battery for my camera, and take some photos for another piece here. Kimmie got a contact for help with her spinning wheel and Richie got to play with some horses and sheep, like the small boy of 37 that he is. After we got back, I chopped and lopped and raked and hoed some more. But only for an hour or two.

Tuesday I finished digging up some ivy that was left in the ground after I hoed the area for the third time. This time, a pickaxe got the job done. My son and his girlfriend dug up a lot of weeds and out-of-control berry bushes in another part of the backyard while I was shopping for concrete piers, but they helped me when I got back. They did an amazing amount of work, those two good kids.

My son the big, strong, smart and omni-competent mechanical engineer had doubts about the success of this next part, but in my optimistic ignorance, I plowed ahead. (I like to achieve failure rather than let common sense bestow defeat on me. Who knows, maybe I'll accomplish what others think is impossible.) I used the pickaxe to dig a shallow trench, about six or seven inches deep and about a foot by two feet, close to the wall and underneath a few inches. I lugged my floor jack from the garage across the back lawn that grabbed the tiny wheels of the jack and didn't want to let go. I shoved the jack under the edge of the shed wall. I cranked that five-ton floor jack until I got the walls elevated about four or five inches. Then I put some flat pieces of concrete under two corners and let it down.

I dug a similar trench on the back of the shed, but it was much harder because I had so little room to swing the pickax and shovel. I had to put the jack at a very shallow angle to the wall, and that meant more digging. This required some trial-and-error with the pickaxe and a straight-bladed shovel, but I finally got the jack under the perimeter beam and started lifting that side of the shed. When I got it up about ten inches, Kimmie and I dug out some serious ivy roots that were partly under the shed and partly right next to where we wanted to put the piers. After we cleared the ground of those large and tenacious roots, I put some flat pieces of concrete under the corners and set concrete piers on top. I let the jack down.

My son let me do all the placing and jacking by myself, though he stood by in case I got hurt. He's the one who chided me for climbing a ladder with a chain saw, all by myself, when he left for Wisconsin with his girlfriend. He loves me and doesn't want to see me get hurt. He has a lot more technical savvy than I do, but I manage to stumble into success occasionally. He was right about the chainsaw and the ladder, however. The chainsaw only left a scratch, but the tree gouged my back when the piece of tree that I topped knocked my ladder sideways. Oh, no worries- it's healed fine.

I got the shed in the air with no one suffering any damage.

I went back to the first jacking location and lifted the shed again, this time taking the shed to about ten inches in the air. More flat concrete and more piers and I let the shed down. It's pretty level. I thought about fussing and getting it perfectly level, shimming this corner with two-by and that corner with one-by but I think it's only about half an inch out of level. I'll wait till after the next rain to see how the ground settles down and then I'll try to level it again with more concrete or some pressure-treated two-by-six.

The shed sat with no felt paper for a couple of days while I built that smoker and took a bit of time to pay bills, do other house chores.

Then I became adept at climbing up and down the ladder to get on top of the shed. Each little piece needed carrying, I'd forget the hammer, the stapler ran out of bullets, I'd need more paper, then I forgot the putty knife for the roof goop. And each time I got hungry, I realized that I'd need to wash my hands with paint thinner to get the goop and tar off my hands. But the job made progress.

Helping me to staple the felt paper to the eaves was my son's girlfriend Kimmie. She stood on a ladder as I sat on the roof. We took turns stapling and trying to get the lumps out of the felt paper. When she went to trim the orange tree, I began with the roll roofing. This was easier because I let it get warm in the sun. I decided to miter it along the five (!) corners since I only needed a bit of overlap. I gooped the edges of the mitered pieces and it looks very good.


Nothing succeeds like success, eh? A week ago, I had a stinky, cluttered, rotted-out shed with a rodent tenant. Today it's clean and structurally sound and eight inches off the ground. Sure, there may be a homeless possum on the city's census, but that's not so bad for him- he'll be fine in the huge vacant lot next door. Our cats have inspected underneath the shed and rendered their feline approval by leaving it alone.

I'm not yet finished- the loose boards and roof repair remain, but the shed's sturdy and off the ground.

Woo Hoooo !!!! Now moi has a place to do some gardening, maybe smoke a cigar and listen to PBS. Yep, life is good and sweet in the Executive Garden Shed.