I'll need something to put my tools in...

[Dandan]

Wood arrived!



I've had another think about the slab and done some research into hiring a polishing/grinding machine, the only thing I could find was either a hand-held device that was never designed to do 30 square metres, or getting in some industrial company to do the job, no doubt for many hundreds of pounds. So what i'm going to do is leave it for now, screed/fill any really offensive areas (Which there may not even be any bits that are that bad, i've not got down on hands and knees to look) and then use a high build resin floor paint, I think that should give me a more than satisfactory surface.

I didn't get much done this weekend as I was busy enjoying myself doing other stuff, but I did set up and make my first cuts!


(As you can see I have so far managed to not cut my thumb off...)

All that forum reading is paying off now, I used all the tricks I could recall, cutting all the same lengths together, using length stops to repeat cuts, even using a screwdriver to lever out the waste from the half laps, it almost felt like I knew what I was doing.

I cut and half lapped all the wall plates, I was going to mortar them in but I was busy for the best bit of the afternoon and it was only 6 degrees here today, I'll have to hope for more clement weather next weekend, as I think it's best to lay cement when its over 10 degrees, is that right?



I did test fit them, all looks ok, my slab hasn't ended up quite as exact as I first thought though, its 10mm out in some dimensions, I've not had a chance to re-check the diagonals yet. It is oversize though so at least I won't have an overhang and i'll just chamfer the mortar between the slab and the wall plate, as well as hiding the error in the back corner.
Also you may notice i've not cut a hole for my big front doors, as much as it's a waste of wood I was going to cut it out afterwards to help keep things square, I'll just 'spot weld' it with mortar for now and tidy it up afterwards.

Walls next weekend!

 

[Dandan]

Wood!
After spending 3 days waiting for the mortar to dry under the wall plate, I finally got to make some walls on Monday.
It's great having the space to lay them out on the flat (ish) floor to get everything even and square, then with my new favourite projectile weapon, the nail gun, they go together in no time at all!



This was when the wall plate really came in handy, I'm so glad I read countless forum posts before embarking on this folly, I was working on my own and erecting the wall was as simple as lift it up, kick it into place and nail it down. No messing with levels and spacers and tape measures, just line it up, lovely.



Second wall went the same way, and the third, everything lining up beautifully, almost as if good preparation actually works, who knew?



My ridge beam turned up at lunchtime, holy bananas that thing is heavy. 8x2 and 7 and a bit metres long. I might be worried about getting that thing in the air but forums to the rescue again and I'm confident I can haul it into place single handed using vertical guides a la Mikes Workshop.



Unfortunately the intermittent drizzle combined with my fear of electrocuting myself with the mitre saw meant I decided to pack up for the day, which of course immediately resulted in no more rain for the entire day.



Wall number 4 next weekend, which is the interesting one with doors and windows and stuff. Which reminds me, I've scavenged some old double glazed units for my windows so I need to make my openings to fit, how much over the size of the glass should I make the stud frame? I was thinking 45mm all around to allow for a sill/edge and then a frame inside that, sound about right?

 

[Fitzroy]

Looks like great progress and will be a super space.

My frames turned out to be 43mm thick, with a 13mm rebate, the glass is 3mm all round smaller than the rebate, my frame is 5mm all round smaller than the opening (which I think is too tight should have allow 8mm). So glass + 3mm + 30mm (frame thickness - rebate) + 8mm = glass + 41mm. So unless you want very thick frames your 45mm sounds like plenty of space.

F.

 

[kelsallcustombats]

Looking very good indeed, wish i had the space in my back garden for a proper workshop like this.

 

[Dandan]

Right then, some more progress has been made despite the British weather's best efforts to thwart me.
Like all the best buildings, I though mine should have the full complement of four walls:



And the eagle-eyed amongst you might have spotted a ridge beam too:



Putting the ridge beam up was probably my favourite part of the build so far, it just went absolutely, exactly as planned. I could so easily see the erection of the beam being one of those jobs that you assume will be fine, but then when you actually get to it, realise just how awkward it is, how heavy it is, how high it has to go, and you end up taking hours and changing plans three times in the process and knackering yourself out. But not this time, oh no, I'd been at those pesky forums again, I was going to benefit from the mistakes of others and not cock this up. As a disclaimer, I did have my Father in Law to help me put this up but I could genuinely have done it on my own, it was that straightforward.

I got the beam onto the top of the walls one end at a time, stood it up in the right orientation and got it centred, then I nailed two vertical members to my studding either side of the beam, at both ends. Now the only place it can go is up in a straight line. I cut two lengths of 2x4 to the exact height that I wanted the underside of the beam (I nailed cross pieces to them too for a bit of safety) and used them to shove the beam upwards until my 2x4's were stood vertically below the beam. Voila, one beam in exactly the right place!



It was surprisingly sturdy at this point, I left it overnight to weather the mini storm we had and it was still standing in the morning.
I tried to crack on Saturday morning but I only managed to cut a couple of rafters before the rain came in and forced me to pack up. Typically it then immediately stopped and the sky cleared the second I had put the last tool away.



I had to go and win a climbing competition for the rest of the day, but I got back on it Sunday morning.
I put the front and rear pairs of rafters in place to check everything for length. As they sat directly on the front and back walls, I knew the length across the bottom would be right, so I just had to worry about the top end. They all seemed to sit in the right place so I nailed them on. I was then joined again by the FIL and we cracked on with rafter cutting, using the first rafter as a template every time, to ensure some degree of regularity.

We offered the next rafter up, it didn't fit.
It was a good few mm short, which was exaggerated by the angle that it makes with the beam so it sat very low against the beam. hmm, I didn't want a wonky roof.
Then I realised, my two long walls currently have nothing supporting them, and we had been leaning cut rafters against them, so they had bowed outwards considerably! We decided to do the middle rafter next, complete with tie beam that will make up my ceiling and we used a ratchet strap to pull the walls together to the correct dimension so we could nail/bolt everything together. This should hold everything straight so we could do the rest of the rafters.
The middle rafters lined up perfectly, and, unsurprisingly, the rafter that was short was now the right length. We put another 16 or so up and every one fell perfectly into place, so my ridge now looks like this:



I'm frankly amazed that it's so accurate 4 metres off the ground, I made a shed a couple of years ago and it was further out than this after I'd built about 4 feet up!



So that's how it stands for now, over half the rafters done and a couple of ceiling tie beams too, I've received the membrane and roof tiles so theoretically I could have an enclosed space by next weekend...

 

[Fitzroy]

Awesome progress! Love the ridge beam photo.

F.

 

[Dandan]

Back in September, whilst laying bricks under the scorching late summer sun, I thought to myself "I'll just get the slab poured this year and then wait until the spring before I build the workshop, I don't want to be out here in the winter, freezing my appendages off and trying to chisel with 2 pairs of gloves on.

Oh how I wish I had listened to summer me, that sweaty-browed fella knew what he was talking about, I spent this weekend freezing my appendages off and trying to chisel with 2 pairs of gloves on and it was as undesirable as summer me predicted.

Still, progress has been made, and it just makes the wood burner feel all the nicer once you are back inside, got to stay positive about these things.

Friday was prep day, I was a one-man band so I cut every piece of timber that I would need to finish the framing. I made noggins from the offcuts, then smaller noggins from the offcuts of the offcuts.
I made some half-lap diagonal braces as I decided not to rely entirely on the cladding for stiffness, especially when the frame becomes top heavy with a roof but no walls.
I cut all the bits needed to fix the overhanging rafters each end, by the end of the afternoon I had a neat pile of bits ready to go.

I got Team Dad on the job on Sunday, my actual dad and my Father-in-law were roped in to stand in the cold with me and freeze their own respective appendages off, we made some good progress and barely lost any limbs to frostbite, all the main frame is now complete:



Noggins and braces:





Front overhang which I'm really pleased with, it looks really nice:



And as you can see from the previous picture, we even got a bit of membrane battened down, I'd have liked to get it all on the roof but I refer you to the previous comments about frozen appendages.
I used another top forum tip for the battens, I made two capital 'I' shaped spacing tools so that I could measure between the two faces I was lining the tiles up to and not just the gap between the battens, especially useful as some of the battens vary significantly in width (+-20mm or more)



I couldn't find my staple gun to pin the loose bits of membrane down so i'll do that next weekend.
The metal roof tiles arrived last week, I've had a little nosey at them and I have to say they look fantastic, really nicely made and a really simple system, complete with ridge tile and gable end covers, fingers crossed I can get some on next weekend if the weather plays ball, mini heatwave, anyone?

 

[Bm101]

Great stuff. Excellent progress.

 

[Sheptonphil]

Awesome job. Well done.

Can't wait to move to build my own new workshop.

Love th amount of photo to document it.

Phil

 

[Dandan]

Thanks chaps, i'm thoroughly enjoying the process, as frustrating as it is to only be able to work on it at weekends, I think in reality it gives me a chance to recover between bouts of construction madness, so when i'm able to work, I get a lot done.

Speaking of getting lots done, this weekend was no different- at least visually- the workshop looks a lot different now than it did last weekend.

Friday afternoon I finished off the roof membrane and battens, the membrane gives a real false sense of security once its laid down, as soon as I couldn't see the void between my feet, I was dancing around on the battens like, oh, I don't know, Beyonce. But with a beard.
Luckily there were no mis-steps and I completed the job.





It didn't go completely smoothly, despite making spacing guides, and further despite putting ARROWS ON THEM, we manage to nail one batten in the wrong place



We did at least notice straight away and prise it off before we ended up putting all the rest in the wrong place, I'm not sure how to idiot-proof things any further to protect myself from, er, myself.

Sunday morning I was up at the crack of, er, 8.30 to be greeted by the first sunlight of what turned out to be a cracking day creeping over next doors fence.



We did 2 big jobs today, the wall membrane and the roof tiles. The pictures of the two are a bit mixed up so i'll narrate and then chuck all the pictures in.
Membrane was going well until I realised I was short by about 2 square metres, at which point my wallet was trembling at the thought of the waste involved in buying another 50m roll for that tiny bit extra and I was mentally flicking through my address book to see who might have a bit spare. Then I remembered that my shed has a membrane on it's roof and it's nowhere near 50m square, i must have a bit left over. A quick rummage behind the mower and sure enough, plenty of spare to finish the job, financial disaster averted! Although it is a different colour, i'm not sure how I feel about that...

The roof tiles were an absolute joy, I got Metrotile and they seem fantastic, we covered the majority of both sides of the roof in a couple of hours with no real issues and they look great.
The end tiles were a bit troublesome as they had to be trimmed down. There is a video on the metrotile website showing how to fit these tiles and it shows a guy happily trimming away at the edges with a pair of tin snips. No problem, thinks I, I have tin snips, i'll cut them with those.
Now my preferred pastime when not building workshops is rock climbing, so I have quite a good grip. I say quite good, go find a doorway with architrave, grab hold of the top lip with one hand, just the one, and lift your feet off the floor. I can do that for 10 seconds, it's my party trick. I digress, I don't know which circus they got the guy on the installation video from, but he's some kind of freak, I could not cut the tile with snips, not even close. I ended up chewing through a dozen dremel discs and fatiguing the tiles into submission, but we got there in the end.

I still have to fit the barge tiles and the capping tile but can't do that until I've fitted the barge boards, so that's job number 1 for next week.

 

[Dandan]

Right I have a dilemma and I'd really like some input from anybody with knowledge, I'll also accept hearsay, conjecture and baseless opinions.

I always intended to use kingspan style rigid insulation, but I've just priced it up from the secondsandco website that do cheaper reject boards, and it's far more expensive than I was expecting!

Boards would be around £700, whereas fluffly loft insulation would cost £150, is there really that much of a difference in performance to warrant the extra £500+ spend? Do I need another membrane of any sort to go with the fluffly insulation to replicate the foil backing of the boards? I'm just having trouble justifying that extra cost for a sheltered building in the south of England that will only get used when I choose to use it.

Thoughts?

 

[sploo]

Right I have a dilemma and I'd really like some input from anybody with knowledge, I'll also accept hearsay, conjecture and baseless opinions.

I always intended to use kingspan style rigid insulation, but I've just priced it up from the secondsandco website that do cheaper reject boards, and it's far more expensive than I was expecting!

Boards would be around £700, whereas fluffly loft insulation would cost £150, is there really that much of a difference in performance to warrant the extra £500+ spend? Do I need another membrane of any sort to go with the fluffly insulation to replicate the foil backing of the boards? I'm just having trouble justifying that extra cost for a sheltered building in the south of England that will only get used when I choose to use it.

Thoughts?

I can give you baseless opinion and conjecture

I understand that some of the better board materials provide similar levels of insulation to much thicker layers of the "the fluffy stuff"; so I suspect it's mostly likely to come down to space vs desired levels of insulation.

There may be practical considerations too - if you're just laying it flat (like a loft) then it doesn't need to be self supporting. If it's going to be in the walls or at the roof angle then the boards will likely be easier to install.

 

[Fitzroy]

In my understanding you can't use bog standard glasswool loft insulation in the walls as it will collapse with time, you need the structured insulation batts, still cheaper than rigid board but more than loft stuff. mm for mm the rigid board is better than glass wool, so for the same thickness you get less insulation. However this just means you will just need a bit more heat to keep the place warm when you are in it, there are basic calculations you can do to work out how much more etc, etc.

I've in the same place as you, ie planning the insulation/internals. My plan is rockwool batts in the walls (for both thermal and sound insulation) and 100mm glass wool in the ceiling. Internal lining with vapour barrier, OSB, 10mm battens, then heavy weight acoustic plasterboard (i v. concerned over noise to my neighbours). My overall approach is reasonable insulation, but very good air-tightness, a dehumidifier and a good heater. Most of the time the place will be cold but moisture controlled (which is easy(ier) if it is reasonably air tight), then when I want to use it the heater and reasonable insulation will enable quick warm up due to low thermal mass.

Well that's my plan anyhow!

F.

 

[mindthatwhatouch]

It's all looking great.
About the metrotile cutting. I used Decra tiles (very similar and comparable product) and they cut easily with a pair of tin snips. Either way I do not understand why it is not used more in this country, fantastic system, lightweight, easy, speedy and good performance.
Have a look at the decra website, they have some good little videos on cutting and folding around barge boards, fitting ridge tiles etc.

 

[Dandan]

Some food for thought there, thanks guys. I'll try and find some of these batts, they look to be about twice the price of the fluff but still less than half the price of the board, could be a good compromise.

A wise pop singer once said that love, love changes everything. In my experience, a roof, a roof changes everything.
I was able to crack on despite some inclement weather now that I have something to shelter under, we boarded up all but one of the ground level openings to keep it (relatively) cosy, and I made a start on painting some of the fascia boards.



I need to put the gable end fascia boards on so that I can finish the roof, as the roof barge tiles nail to the gable end, then the roof capping tiles sit over everything. Should make for a nice waterproof roof, but it means I'm now held up waiting for coats of paint to dry before I can lay another tile.

That aside, progress was also halted this weekend by a single, innocuous sentence in the Metrotile fitting guide. "trim and bend the top row of tiles to size"
Sounds simple, sounds innocent, some tin snips and maybe a pair of pliers, job done, right?
Bending corrugated metal sheets is not fun.
Our first attempt, clamping the tile into a wide jawed vice and bending it in sections, resulted in a tile with both a helix twist and a banana bend! I should have got a picture, I'm not talking a touch out of line, this thing nearly curled back on itself.
Bending across the corrugations while retaining the basic shape of the tile was really tricky, our ultimate solution was to clamp the whole length of the bend between two metal bars, secure with 6-8 G-clamps, then pinch it up in the vice in the gaps between the G-clamps and bend it in sections, being sure to tighten all the G-clamps periodically, as if either end of the tile slips out, it bends out of shape straight away.
We had success eventually but not without casualties, I hope I have enough tiles to finish the job!

That put paid to getting anything else done, so I hope to make better progress next weekend.
Here's a gratuitous shot of my new interior space to keep you satisfied for now:

 

[davem62]

Hi I would use either kingspan or price up cavity batts which is the insulation in brickwork, loft insulation will sag and to work correctly needs to expand ie.150mm deep etc or you won't get the thermal value.I did all my roof and walls with an equivalent to kingspan from my local builders merchant and it was cheaper than the seconds, I will try to find the price we paid , but the difference is well worth the extra cash, not nice having a nice workshop and shiny tools but being to cold to use them and also I believe the hard foam is more soundproof
Regards David


Hi quick search http://www.insulation4less.co.uk/50mm-e ... -4m-x-1-2m

£18 a sheet and free del over £300 , at a guess of 20 sheets for the wall and then you could use roof insulation in the rafters , my preference is to put celotex etc in the roof spars and over board with 11mm osb and leave plenty of storage in the roof

 

[Roughcut]

After purchasing a pack of Wickes Batts I found them to be poor quality, so I shopped around online and eventually ordered several packs of the genuine Rockwool Flexi-slab Batts for my shed and was happy with them.

 

[Dandan]

My insulation procrastination has yet to reach a conclusion but thanks for all your input, it's certainly helping me feel like I am making an informed decision...

More progress, some of it while I wasn't even there! My Father-in-Law is enjoying the build almost as much as I am so he sneaks around during the week and does little bits of work on it! This week I came home to find all the battens nailed to the exterior ready for the cladding, top man.



I went around and added bug mesh to the bottom edge, tucked behind the battens, stapled to the frame and the hopefully pressed into a reasonable seal by the bottom cladding panel.



I've already got spiders moving in inside so the sooner I can make the place mostly bug-proof, the better.

I finished painting the front and rear barge boards, the first coat had not dried well outside so I appropriated a small area in the dining room for the last coat, the ability to bring 3.5m boards inside was an unforseen advantage to having an open plan living space. Not one my wife would see as an advantage perhaps...



With those finished and dry overnight, I was able to finish the roof. I don't mean I was able to make it mostly weatherproof but i'll need to tidy up later, I mean it's completely finished. Every tile, every edge strip, I've even been round and painted over the exposed nail heads with the supplied paint and little pot of texture sprinkles. It's finished.
I know myself too well that if I leave the finishing touches until 'later', that later will never materialise and I want this thing done properly. If I've done it right, I shouldn't need to get back on that roof for a period measured in decades, so let's hope i've done it right.





The plastic panels for the gable windows arrived today i've been told, so i'll try to fit them this week (i'm heading home for the holidays on Wednesday night for 12 days of construction and maybe a bit of Christmas) which will make the building sealed all the way down to eave height. If the cladding ever turns up it could become mostly weatherproof very soon!

In other news, my wife had a surprise visit from a council lady today who wanted to inspect the workshop. Now I don't know if Mrs Curtaintwitcher over the way had nothing better to do than complain, or if the council just keep their eye out for new roofs (rooves?) popping up on the skyline, but from what I can gather, she seemed to arrive with the impression that the build wasn't quite Kosher, but after measuring everything and finding it within all permitted development regulations of height, area and distance from boundaries, she left saying it all seemed fine and she would send some kind of correspondence to confirm/refute that soon.
The worst case I can think of is that she deems it not within permitted development for some reason (possibly due to her dodgy tape measure, my wife lent her one of mine...) and I have to retrospectively apply for planning which should almost certainly get approved considering it was built in the spirit of permitted development. It's extra paperwork and extra cost if that happens but I don't think i'll be forced to tear it down any time soon...I hope.

Next episode - Windows!

 

[Bm101]

You'll be well proud of that roof I would think. :wink: Keep up with the updates, you're doing an excellent job fella.
Chris

 

[mindthatwhatouch]

I was able to finish the roof. I don't mean I was able to make it mostly weatherproof but i'll need to tidy up later, I mean it's completely finished. Every tile, every edge strip, I've even been round and painted over the exposed nail heads with the supplied paint and little pot of texture sprinkles. It's finished.
I know myself too well that if I leave the finishing touches until 'later', that later will never materialise.........

Know what you mean, that reminds me to put yet another job on my roundtuit list.