Shed build (WIP)

[angelboy]

I bought loads of rolls of loft insulation when they were £1 per roll a few years back - I ended up with a huge amount which has been in my loft ever since (so used as intended I suppose!) so I dragged down a few rolls of 170mm and a few rolls of 100mm insulation. In the roof I used the 170mm which was fine for the rafter depths. The black bit on the end of the rafters is actually from a roll of DPC. You can double it up if you need to but it's used to stop the breather membrane from sagging at the end and collecting water. It's used as a cheaper alternative to an underlay tray. I just tack it into place with a hammer tacker and let it continue into the gutter.

By now I'd already fitted the fascias which were made up from 22x200mm PSE, primed then eventually painted with 10 year exterior paint. My eldest helped out with fitting the breather membrane but like all 16 year olds her mind began to wander and so did the membrane. It had to be pulled a little scew wiff and ended up creased. At least she had a go!

As I'd mentioned before, the rafter ends were slightly out and instead of trimming them I just stuck the fascia board up. I know they're out and most of the members of the board could spot it but none of my family have mentioned it - along with the millions of other bits that aren't quite right - they seem invisible to some so job done, let's have a cuppa!

Here's my lovely finial which is there just to cover up a bad join. Don't know why it was out, must have been late in the day. I remember thinking, 'F**k it, I'll stick a filler bit over it', which I did. It didn't look too bad until I put the ridge tiles on and then it looked a bit of a dog.

 

[angelboy]

For some reason I ended up fixing the soffits before I cladded the exterior. For the life of me I can't remember why I did it but it was a bit of a mistake really that required lots of silicone filler later on. Again, for cost reasons I'd planned to rip all the soffits from a single sheet of 9mm ply. My Sketchup model told me that 100mm strips would do it so when I order the material that was the plan. However, I ended up giving the rafters a 160mm overhanf instead of the 100mm that I'd planned for but it wasn't until I got to marking out the soffits that I remembered. As I'm tight and didn't want to order and entire board for the sake of a couple of meters off soffits I decided to patch up a section around the rear. I figured that no-one, not even me will be going round the back to often and I wouldn't really be paying too much attention to the soffits anyway. Cue some dodgy cuts and a load of filler! The soffits angle back and are fixed directly under the rafter as to make them horizontal would have been lower than the door frame.

This photo is out of sequence to show you the filled in section at the back.

 

[dmcturk]

Hi Angelboy, great project, and enjoyed looking through the photos of the different stages. I saw you used Sketchup, is it easy to use? Do you have to pay for the full version, or is it possible to use the free version to create the design?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Wizard9999]

Great WIP angelboy =D>
Hooked now so keenly awaiting the next instalment!

 

[ghr]

@dmcturk

> I saw you used Sketchup, is it easy to use?

Its pretty easy to get going with. angelboy's model is _very_ good, but it won't take you long to get reasonable at making plans.

> Do you have to pay for the full version, or is it possible to use the free version to create the design?

The free version has worked well enough for me for the last 10 years.

 

[angelboy]

Yes, Sketchup is free. I've downloaded the latest one but my mac OS isn't new enough so I'm stuck on Sketchup 8 for the time being.

 

[ghr]

@angelboy how big is the shed? Looks around 3m x 3.8m if I counted the bricks correctly!

How long has it taken you, and if you don't mind me asking, what kind of money did it cost?

Thinking about doing something similar

Cheers,

Gareth

 

[angelboy]

@angelboy how big is the shed? Looks around 3m x 3.8m if I counted the bricks correctly!

How long has it taken you, and if you don't mind me asking, what kind of money did it cost?

Thinking about doing something similar

Cheers,

Gareth

It's 4m x 3.2m and 3.2m to the ridge with a 25 degree roof pitch - supposedly too shallow for the clay tiles but that's all I dare go for.

Costs are a little tricky - I already had the blocks (I remember they were free from freecycle) and 85% of the bricks were left over from my garage (15p/brick) and the remainder from a gate arch I took down. I had odds and ends like the DPM, DPC, the filler sand some roofing membrane, the clay ridge tiles and 1 or two tubes of chaulk but after that I have records of spending a little under £2200. I still have a little bit of timber left, enough to make a log store but there was lots of split cladding boards. I'd say I lost a good six 4.8m lengths at £5.5/board.

What price would it have cost to get a builder in?

Well, I've had that discussion with my wife and you'd be probably be talking a good 6 weeks labour with a skilled trade and labourer at £170+/day. The clay tiles would have been at least double/sqm and the door & windows could have come in at £1000.

Would anyone agree with about £8k-£9k?

I forgot to say how long it took. Well I dug out and poured the slab in November last year. Then I started back up in March time and the bricks were up by May. Up to this point I'd just been doing a few hours here and there. Once the timber came in July I pretty much did 3 solid days per week on average for three months.

 

[angelboy]

Sash window in but still needs a lot of work.

My wife doing a bit of sanding of the door ready to be fitted. Another ebay item I picked up for £10 which came with 5 level mortice lock and Yale latch with 3 sets of keys! Great but can I find a bloody striker plate anywhere, nope! Turns out Legge are the only lock manufacturer not to sell parts, only full lock sets so I still have some ebay searching to do.

I bought 4000+ clay tiles from ebay in preparation for my garden projects. They were loaded on pallets so I took my old pallet truck and hired a Luton van with a tail-lift so it'd be an easy load at the collection end. Wrong! My pallet truck didn't extend fully so my Dad and I had to handball every tile onto the back of van, pallet them up, then do the same in reverse. It took three trips in total and was a good 9 hours day. By the time you add the van and fuel they ended up costing me £6/msq so a decent enough deal in the end, if not a load of hard work.

Cue another mistake - I'd calculated how many tiles lathes and tiles I needed for each side and started to tile the roof. I'd pretty much got as far in the photo before realising that I'd cut the spacers wrong and so ended up with about 4 or 5 couses less than I should have - Whoops! I knew I needed 100mm headlap but like a complete silly person I forgot to account for the thickness of the lathe it's self so I'd ended up with 138mm headlap. You can also see the slightly ruffled membrane that my eldest struggled with. The rain came down today and didn't stop for a good 6 hours but the shed was dry as a bone so at least, as scruffy as it looks, it did its' job!

Tiles still need a jet-wash though........

Here you can see the insulation going in. It's the 100mm loft insulation that I'd cut oversized and squeezed into the top and bottom. Once the breather membrane is on nice and tight I'm hoping it wont sag.

I initially insulated the main walls from the left of the door around to the right of the right hand stable window. I could then pull the breather membrane around in one continuos strip. You can see the windows have been glazed and primed by now as well.

Door is painted but it's not what it says on the tin. I even complained to Ronseal about it as it's a mint green and not the colour on the tin or on the tester bit in the store. The roof has also been finished on the shot and the gutters are fixed, minus the down pipe of course.

 

[angelboy]

The sash and the stable windows have/had crown glass in them but I didn't think I needed it replacing like-for-like so I ordered greenhouse glass. The large sash glass that was broken at the corner was cut down and fitted into one of the stable windows. I've never used putty before or glazed a window before so another new learning experience. It sort of knocks your confidence a little when the guy in the glaziers asked if I'd done it before and then said, 'what never, you've never worked with putty before? Y'know there's a real knack to it don't you?' Yeah, thanks! No, the guy was really helpful in the end. He told me to warm up the putty, get it in the frame and then make the cut. Don't keep going back over it or I'll keep chasing my tail, the less I messed around with it the better and if there's any little bits that need attention then lick my finger and lightly go over it and the putty will smudge.

I decided to buy glaze the bottom of the stable window and then fix the vent piece on the inside so it became decorative rather than functional. I'd offer one of pieces of glass up to window from the inside but then realised that I'd left a rusty nail sticking out of the beading for the vents. God knows how I got the glass in without it chipping but now I didn't know how I'd get it out without it being pushed from the outside. I turned around for a second to get a blade to push it out with and the wind took it and it smashed on the floor! Cue another trip to the glaziers and another £5! I'll show some photos of the pig-of-a-job I made with the sealant when putting in the glass a little later!

 

[angelboy]

More overlap than required but it saves cutting it. I bought this stuff on advice found online. Cheap as chips (1x50m was £36.94 including delivery) and can be used for roofs and walls (in Scotland - if it's good enough to use in Scotland then it's good enough for my shed. It's not so bad fitting it on your own, an extra pair of hands would have been better but I just stapled it on with a hammer tacker then pulled it taught to the next timber upright. Still got loads left for the next job.

 

[angelboy]

Finally insulated the rest - awful itchy stuff even when working outside with it. When I fitted the insulation it was the height of summer and I'm togged up with overcoat, gloves, face mask and eye protection sweating my cobs off - and I still got covered in the stuff!

You can see the stable windows in their closed position on this shot.

 

[angelboy]

First bit of cladding and stop end up. I chose to use squared edged 22x150mm treated boards so that with a 25mm overlap there'd still be 125mm showing. I originally wanted 200mm wide boards but the supplier was having a hard time sourcing some at the right price so it's back to design v cost. Each board cost £5.52 inc VAT and I order 52 - 6 were scrap, either split from one end to the other or badly scarred from the wood preserver. I did rip a few bits for the door and window trims and other trim bits so some still came in handy. Once I've build the log store I'll know how much waste I have, but it won't be a lot. I know Mike has gone on about this in another thread and I may pay the price later down the line but I chose to nail the boards at the top 25mm and not to the bottom couple of inch above the board below. I did this so that the nail heads wouldn't be visible. Mistake? Maybe, but when I was making a cloase-boarded fence out of 125mm timbers I remember reading that if you don't nail both sides then the boards will cup - well on some of the boards I ended up just nailing down the right side with the intention of nailing the left once the fence was up but I still haven't got round to it - 4 years later every board is still flat with no cupping. So we'll use this method as a test and if the boards start to cup then I'll let you know as I'll have to add additional fixings down the line. Fingers crossed!

I made up a couple of simple hand-held spacer jigs and used some clamps on the corners so I could fix the boards on my own (I didn't take a photo of the jig and clamps but if you want I can take one later - just ask). The shorter boards were no problems - bit tricky for the longer boards and I may have asked one of my kids to hold a few steady towards soffits. Again, I see Mike has turned up his DPC and nailed it to the underside of the boards whereas I forced the DPC downwards under the bottom board, which is fixed flush to the wall.

Also another supposed no-no - I haven't battened out the studs for a ventilation gap. Mike swears that this MUST be done BUT I've read through all the technical drawings on the Permavent website and you don't have to have ventilation with this breather membrane on a warm/wall roof type construction. I'm just going by the technical spec! For this reason I didn't install an insect barrier either - might be an issue but maybe not.

I haven't mentioned yet that I made the door frames from 2 lengths of 4.8 75x100mm PSE redwood. I haven't written down the price for some reason but it won't have cost more than about £30 compared to made up frames of £70+. Again, another mistake - I ended up kicking out the closer side frame at the bottom by 10mm or so, which means there's a gap towards the bottom of the door. There's no way of fixing this unless I remove the frame and start again - I'm not going to do this, the door shuts secure but it's a sloppy job, I'll admit it - I'll refer back to my 80/20 principle!

 

[angelboy]

Before fixing the boards I ran a bead of chaulk down the stop-ends which you can see in this picture.

You can also see that the stop end is just another 22mm board and the cladding sticks out over it.

I didn't want this so I secured another board over it. Id I were s stickler then I'd have ordered some 50x150mm boards but I like to use what I have already. The problem was then the butt-jointed ends had an extra visible joint so I ripped up some 10mm trim and nailed it over.

 

[angelboy]

I think getting the cladding on seemed like the beginning of the end of the job and as there's a lot to show for it after a day but I'd still got the rest of the fiddly membrane to fix before moving on. I started the cladding more for my wife than me as every day she'd come home from work and ask if I'd started the cladding, eager to see what the finished job would look like.

 

[tomf]

The DIY £1 a roll loft insulation is horrible stuff to use. It's not the fiber glass in it which is bad it's the metal and other rubbish they left in it as it's from recycled glass.
Very nice shed, if you can call it that it's more like a palace

 

[morfa]

What a lovely shed. Looking forward to seeing the internals finished up.

ghr - it's easy for you to say sketchup is simple to use. Mr Big Shot Software Dev...

 

[ghr]

> ghr - it's easy for you to say sketchup is simple to use. Mr Big Shot Software Dev...

Heh, well, easy is always relative. I started with SketchUp about 10 years ago, but even then I'd had a computer for probably the same amount of time so yeah, I'm pretty comfortable with using software.

I found it pretty easy to get to grips with compared to "real" CAD software (can't remember what was around at the time I started with SketchUp), and considerably easier than Photoshop.

Like anything, its a case of starting small and working your way up.

 

[Wizard9999]

Continue to really enjoy this WIP.

First bit of cladding and stop end up. I chose to use squared edged 22x150mm treated boards so that with a 25mm overlap there'd still be 125mm showing. I originally wanted 200mm wide boards but the supplier was having a hard time sourcing some at the right price so it's back to design v cost.

Was there a reason you did not go for feather edge?

Also another supposed no-no - I haven't battened out the studs for a ventilation gap. Mike swears that this MUST be done BUT I've read through all the technical drawings on the Permavent website and you don't have to have ventilation with this breather membrane on a warm/wall roof type construction. I'm just going by the technical spec!

I plan to follow your lead on this one as it will save a lot of work and make the end result look a lot better.


Can't wait to see the interior.

 

[angelboy]

Very nice shed, if you can call it that it's more like a palace

Thanks - not quite a palatial name, it's been knick-named 'Number 12' as that's the numberplate on the door.