Kenneth FinneganSo I've got this empty concrete pad on the side of my house.
It used to have a rotted out 12x24' shed on it, but I demolished that last fall and figured I could do something better... 🧵
Day one was grinding down the high spots with a diamond cup wheel. $75 for the cup wheel and corded angle grinder.
Day two is opening up the cracks with a diamond cut disc and filling them with crack sealer. $40 for the diamond discs and crack filler.
My dad volunteered to come down and help me restack all of the lumber inside of the fence and all in its own piles so I can get to all of it.
Only took the two of us about 2 hours to shuttle everything back there.
The inaugural wall frame. Now just fill with studs, repeat five more times, attach together, add roof, and bongo bango, you've got yourself a shed.
The inaugural mistake! I meant to leave that stud out so I'd have room to nail the header in.
So I guess we've moved to the "improvising" stage of this project.
Day two of framing my new shed. I woke up this morning and can still move, but I'm beginning to suspect that I don't want to quit my job and start framing houses for a living.
One wall panel done, second layout done. Now we just need to cut some studs and do it again.
The second panel went together much faster.
The site supervisor is sleeping in my office.
One of my neighbors came by to help me with the big lift. So we've got the tallest wall up in the air; everything from here on is lighter.
Alright. I found my limit. It is too hot and going back outside after noon was stupid. 🥵
We're up to a big J, which is exactly where I was hoping to get to today since this means the walls aren't all only held up with 2x4 braces and can kind of stand on its own.
The nice thing about driving a pickup truck is that when I tweak the shed design at the last minute and end up short a few 12 foot boards, I can just pick them up at the Home Depot.
We had some fog roll in this morning, so I took the opportunity to put a quick 90 minutes into framing another wall panel before it got hot today.
First good look of where the door is going and what the total footprint of the shed looks like.
Pat came over and helped me get the first row of OSB up, so the shed is finally stable enough I don't need to worry about a wind storm coming through.
Driving Tapcons freaking sucks and I don't want to talk about it.
I'm at that moderately stressful part where I need to make a final decision on the final roof line, and then make 16 copies of the first rafter I cut.
Pat came by this morning and helped me finish up cutting out all 19 rafters and nailing up all the hurricane ties to hold the roof on.
At that point we were ready to start putting rafters in the air, so why not?
The palm nailer was amazing for driving the hanger nails 11 feet up on an extension ladder. Easily the best $30 I've ever spent at Harbor Freight. Anyone who has an air compressor should pick one up; they're just so handy for driving nails in awkward tight spaces.
Got the last two rafters up, so just need to get the fascia and rake ladders up before we can start slinging roof sheething and shingles.
Another morning on the shed. We got all the blocking done between the rafters, so we're another step closer to SHINGLES!
I also just realized that it's been a month since I got the original lumber delivery for this shed! So here's how we're doing as a whole one month in from delivery.
Final progress for the whole weekend. We're about half done with the sheathing, then I need to go shopping for shingles.
Climbing the learning curve on applying zip system flashing tape this morning. Glad I started on the walls and not the roof.
And before you ask; yes, I rolled the tape. #zipsystem
Two rows of roof sheathing done. Just one more full row and a three foot row left before we are officially working on the roof itself.
Roof deck complete. Now I just need to paint the rake and fascia boards, tape the seams, drip edge, felt paper, rake flashing, and we can start laying down shingles.
T-50 staples weren't cooperating going into the OSB, so while my gun isn't technically rated for them, you ARE able to buy 3/8" narrow crown staples. Short enough to not poke all the way through the 1/2 roof decking, but rigid enough to not be giving my any trouble stapling the insulation baffles to the bottom of the roof deck.
These baffles are because I'm doing a vaulted / cathedral ceiling in here, so this guarantees an air gap / path between the ceiling insulation and the roof decking. This allows air to flow from the lower soffit to the upper soffit to transport away any moisture that accumulates in these rafter bays and keeps the shingles cooler by having circulation behind them.
Second evening finishes out the baffles. Just punching things out in prep for shingles.
We are getting tantalizingly close to laying down the roof! All of it fits nicely in my pickup too.
Doesn't look too bad when it's all neatly piled on the ground. I'm sure I'll be fine and this part will be easy.
I'm shooting the trim paint on the fascia and rake boards before doing the roof. I figure it's easier to paint it now before I put the drip edge over it.
The dog only got lightly misted with white paint. She still mostly looks black.
Got all the roof seams in the OSB taped. Trying not to think about the fact that just this was $100 worth of tape.
Taking a break from the roof to stay out of the sun, you can get this disodium octoborate powder which you mix with water and spray on your bare studs before closing them in to prevent termite damage.
Am I really convinced this will make a huge difference? Not really. But for $13, it's pretty cheap insurance. And it isn't a question that we'll get termites in here; just a question of how fast and how bad.
Some people also just use Borax for the same thing, but structurally tetraborate and octoborate are different enough I figured I'd splurge for the real stuff.
So I put down the two rolls of asphalt paper that goes under the shingles. On steeper roofs, you can get away with just the zip system coating, but since I'm building only a 3/12 pitch roof, I need two layers of underlayment, so I can count the zip system as one, then put down 30 pound felt paper as the second.
Would you believe how much I came up short? I guess I'm going to buy a third roll, for the last nine freaking square feet.
Day one of putting shingles on the roof. I got through four bundles before the sun really came out and I called it quits.
Key take aways:
1) the part that wreaks you is carrying the 70 lb bundles up onto the roof. For larger projects, definitely worth getting the shingles delivered directly to the roof.
2) the little 1 gallon 0.5scfm trim compressor I own is able to keep up with one rookie shooting roofing nails absolutely no problem. Glad I didn't go buy/borrow/rent/steal a larger compressor for this project.
3) I'm definitely just paying someone to reroof my house when it comes time. My dad was freaking crazy when he replaced the roof on his house back in his prime. I, also, am past my prime.
furicle@kwf my father firmly believed it was the province of sons and daughters to deliver the shingles to the roof, and hold the chalk line :-)
@kwf I confess I paid to have my roof redone. My kids don't realize the bullet they dodged:-)