I’ve had a lull in my brainiac works, so I’ve been able to
get some work done on the writing shed.
I started off by disrobing part of my yard with a sod
cutter. Once it was nude, I had to level the site, which I accomplished with a
shovel and rake. I then located the first foundation stone. I used some cinder
blocks I’ve had sitting around for a few years; they’re good enough for what I’m
doing. I dug ‘em down a few inches and made sure they were tamped in well, and
level.
Since I didn’t have a transit handy, I used the straightest
reclaimed piece of 2x8 I had on hand to telegraph the elevation from the
cornerstone to all the remaining foundation stones. I placed my four foot level
on top of the 2x8 and voila: it’s a
12 foot level. Mind you, I wasn’t aiming to get each stone perfectly in
position—just close enough to be able to shim the floor after it was built. The
goal was to get all six stones roughly at the same elevation, within less than
a quarter of an inch of each other relative to the cornerstone. The Egyptians
would probably ridicule such lax tolerances, but this is good enough for who it’s
for.
The next step involved the Pythagorean Theorem.
In framing, we call it the 3-4-5 rule. Basically, in order to find the
hypotenuse of a right triangle, pull measurements on each 90 degree leg that
fulfill the 3-4-5 rule, like so: if one leg is 3 feet, and the leg 90 degrees
from that is 4 feet, the hypotenuse (the side of the triangle that connects the
two right angle legs) has to be 5 feet. If it’s not, you don’t have a right
triangle, and your framing isn’t square. In my case, I pulled 6 feet on one
side and 8 feet on the other, and moved those two legs until the diagonal (the
hypotenuse) yielded 10 feet (notice that these are multiples of 3-4-5). I had
to do this several times, confirming the placement of my foundation stones.
Once all the stones were reasonably situated (of course, one
of them refused to cooperate, but that’s par for the course), I could begin
building the frame. The reclaimed materials bundle that I have managed to
procure came ready-made with a doubled-up 2x8 joist; perfect for the backbone
of my floorplan. I cut it to length and began laying out the framing, nailing
it together as I went. Now, lots of guys would probably tell you to use
hangers, but I elected to save some scratch and toenail (drive nails in on an
angle, one from each side) the floor joists together, gluing them after they’d
been nailed. Cheaper and faster, and arguably just as strong. You’ll notice from
the photos that using reclaimed lumber means putting up with random holes
(drilled for electrical in the previous installation), but they don’t affect
the strength.
My next step was insulating the floor, which was
interesting. I used 24” wide batts and installed them upside down, so that the
kraft paper faces the ground. Hopefully that will increase durability. I had to
buy insulation supports, which are just lengths of steel stock that you wedge
into the joist spaces that act as a spring and support the weight of the
insulation. It’s lame and I hate it, but it’ll do.
After all that was done, I busted out the 3-4-5 rule again
and made sure my framing was reasonably square. Sure enough, it had gone
slightly trapezoidal, but I could easily rack the thing into shape using a
length of 2x4 as a lever, prying against the ground and moving the corners back
into square. Further fine tuning was accomplished by using the factory edges of
my sheathing (the OSB floorboards) as a guide. It went pretty quickly once I
got the first sheet lined up with the framing and nailed down. I used
construction adhesive, gluing as I went along, lining up the sheathing and then
nailing it down.
Now that the deck is done, I should be able to run
electrical pretty soon. Since this big 12x12 deck is nice and level and flat, I’ll
be building my trusses before I build
the walls, and then setting them aside until I’m ready to build the roof. I
need something like a huge workbench in order to fabricate those, and the shed
floor fits the bill perfectly. The next installment in this series will
chronicle that.
