The Writing Shed, Part Five

My brother and I have decided that close not only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, but that it also counts in regard to framing. Especially when it comes to sheds. Granted, lots of guys are precise to about an eighth of an inch. My brother is far more picky, so a job done in the slovenly midlander fashion for him is about par for the rest of the world.

We started in the morning pretty early. I don’t know what it is about Idaho weather, but as soon as one thinks about installing a roof, it will rain. It did that day, but only briefly, as if to say, “Ha ha hurl.” Anyway, the first truss is the most important because everything else depends on it for layout, plumb, and square; and also because of global warming. As such, naturally, you’ll want to consult your guidebook of sailormouth expletives because the first truss will also probably be a cast iron Mongolian cluster flock. It wasn’t so bad. It only took about an hour to fix all the mistakes I had made on the walls that translated quite logically into the roof. See, this is why I have help. And he pays off in cheap beers, which is even better.

It wasn’t long before we had installed two or three of the trusses, and things were going right along. Note the bracing. The tails of the trusses were allowed to run “wild.” We would cut them off later. Twice. Really. You’ll notice at some point in the perusal of these images that the roof has a certain asymmetrical stance to it. This is one hundred percent intentional and not in any way the result of a mistake of any kind by anyone involved on the job. It is also not similar to an episode of ancient history involving two men, one of whom was helping with this roof, who at one point were replacing the starter on my old Euro-Ford whilst drinking beer and then proceeded to catch the car on fire.

Adding to the hilarity and all around enjoyable nature of the day, we had “help” from two small children who happened to be walking by and spontaneously began climbing ladders, brandishing hammers and saws, and mostly saying, “Hey dad! Watch this!” So we had no excuse, therefore, to not build the best damn shed roof you ever saw.

We eventually built ourselves right out of materials and had to run to Home Depot, where we parked in the PRO CUSTOMER parking, which I think is self-explanatory, obviously. We brought home a bag of H clips (which are officially called something else in order to be as confusing as possible), some tiko nails, and lots of sheathing. Either my neighbors love me and prefer generosity, or I have angered them and provoked them to rummaging around in their spare parts bin and giving me various tidbits to hurry the project along. I prefer to think it’s the former, with gifts like this. My Dutch neighbor from across the street gave me this gable end vent, which is precisely what I need in order to make the winter season cigar ventilation device work properly. More on that some other time.

Once all the trusses were set, we had lunch. There was some homemade lasagna from the night before. It tasted even better the next day. The sauce was homemade from Italian sausage, pepperoni, crushed tomatoes, basil, garlic, sun dried tomatoes, sherry, and salt. I never knew they had those oven-ready lasagna noodles; boy howdy. What a time saver. I also found whole milk ricotta and mozzarella. That really made it. But it has almost nothing to do with building a shed, so on with the subject matter. But note the asymmetry. Again, this has nothing to do with beer. The longer eaves on the west side will create a safe place to hang my rakes and shovels while also keeping them handy. It’s intentional. I told my brother, “My wife will hate it. But I love it because it’s just slightly eccentric. Make it so.”

We started nailing the sheathing down after lunch. We let the ends run wild because, after we determined the length of the overhang for the gables (we’re basically freehanding this; there are no plans), we would only have to make one cut. Smart! Even with beer. The H clips install on the top edge of the sheathing in between the trusses, adding strength, and for cheap. They serve to tie the sheathing together top to bottom on their horizontal edge.

After what felt like a wrestling match with a cougar (not the sultry sophisticated kind), we were pretty much done. The incredulous look my brother had given me at the beginning of the day, when he had discovered that I had built the trusses to an 8/12 pitch, was now understandable. My body hurt from fingertip to toenail. As a matter of fact, I can still feel it, and it’s not nice. But we did good work, and I’m proud of it. Now I can fill in my gable ends and complete some of the framing on the inside (for finish work like sheetrock). I can do that all by myself. Which probably means it will be asymmetrical, and that will be intentional. Duh.

The Writing Shed, Part Four

Last time I wrote about the shed I was missing a wall. There were two ends sort of dangling in the breeze like a participle. Whatever that is.

Since the fourth wall would not fit inside the other three laying down (which is how ya build ‘em), I had to frame it up on the grass. As it turned out, that was much nicer for my blown-out knees to kneel down on than the floor. My wife helped me stand it up and get in in position, sans sheathing. We had to lift the pre-drilled bottom plate over the power conduit. I didn’t install the header for the sliding glass door until the wall was set. I wanted it to be light and tweakable, because I had two corners to meet up with. After I nailed off the corner, I tacked on the first piece of sheathing at the top, letting it drape, checking for square. I wasn’t so worried about things being plumb or level yet—the deck has settled a bit since I dug the foundation stones, so there will be some shimming and leveling for fine tuning as weight is added to the structure.

Now that the power is inside the shed and not just sticking up into the atmosphere, I can begin thinking about wiring up all the switches and recepts I’ll need. I plan to use those ultra-modern LED lightbulbs, which have become pretty reasonable price-wise. I refuse to install CFLs, because one, they contain mercury, which is toxic (bet you didn’t know that, and please if you use those idiotbulbs, take them to a HAZMAT drop off when they expire—don’t chuck them into a landfill—we’ll be drinking mercury in our groundwater pretty soon if you do). Two, CFLs irritate the shit out of me because they take about five minutes to come on and warm up to full bright, which is like driving for groceries in a Model T. CFLs are rubbish. Anyway, more on electrical in the future. LED lightbulbs will contribute to efficiency, they last forever, and they won’t tax my electrical feed. They use about one tenth the power of an incandescent, and every little bit helps. Not for the environment. For my power bill. I'm an evil capitalist.

I got the sliding glass door from my brother. He was looking to replace the one on his house with a French door, and I told him we’d go halvsies on that if I could have his old slider. Turns out I paid twenty five bucks for it; not bad. It installed very easily. There’s a flange along the outside edges of it, and that flange is meant to butt up to the framing. After it’s all hunky-dory, the sheathing is installed over the top of the flange, decently tight to the door. [I've since been informed that I should have installed the flange over top of the sheathing. But I ain't changing it.] It’s important not to screw the flange along its top edge—it has to have room to expand and contract with temperature changes. If you strangle off the door by running screws through the top flange, you may end up with cracked glass.

After I got the slider figured out, I was able to continue sheathing the rest of the shed. A 2x4 wall is pretty strong in compression, but adding the sheathing makes it strong in shear load. Building each wall into a square makes those walls exponentially stronger, as does adding the roof. All that to say I’m past the point of needing to brace the walls, but it’s not done until the roof is on. And speaking of which, my brother and I figured out a way to build it simply, cheaply, quickly, and all while keeping it quiet and adding a facility for it to vent from bottom to top. If a roof isn’t vented, condensation could develop in cold weather, and extreme heat could build up in summer, both of which make it tough not only on the shingles, but eventually the framing. So we’re going to vent it. I’ll show you next time around, or the time after that. Or the time after that.

Between now and then I have to fine tune the floor, moving one foundation stone and shimming some others. I also have to build the inner wall. This will separate the storage part of the shed from the writing part. I already have my lawnmower parked in there. It looks great.

The Writing Shed, Part Three

Since I last updated this series, I’ve done a lot of work to the writing shed. Plus, I began using a phrase I’m sure I’ll use often in the future: “Babe, I’m going to the shed.”

I neglected to install pressure blocking on my joists when I was framing up the floor. I clean forgot it. To compensate for this, then, I added a layer of 3/8” underlayment, glued and stapled down. Now the floor doesn’t sag. Of course, it rained soon after I did this, permanently raising the edges of each sheet, so now I’ve got to get in there with a belt sander and some 40-grit and relieve the seams a bit. It wouldn’t do to have a crummy floor. I meant to seal the whole deck with some oil base floor paint, but I was tied up that morning, and by the time I was ready to roll, it was raining.

On to the next bit, then. I’ll fix the floor after the roof is on.

Since I had a nice flat surface to work on, the next step was building the trusses. This required a flurry of Googling in order to remember how to use my Swanson Speed Square. Basically, it’s an aluminum right triangle with cheats on it so carpenters don’t need to know trigonometric math by heart. I figured my 4/12 pitch (4 inches of rise for every foot of run), drew the angles, and cut my top chords. After that, with my brother’s help, I laid out each one precisely the same (I traced the first one on the deck and then lined up all the others on those lines, temporarily screwing each truss to the deck for nailing). OSB gussets were glued and nailed on with ring shank nails. The bottom chords, sections of 2x6, were cut, glued in and nailed the next day.

I suppose I should mention the power feed. The back yard is currently in a state of recovery because I have been digging the crap out of it lately. I had to remove an old piece of conduit that had been sticking up out of the ground (it wasn’t live) that failed to launch. Shed plans changed over the course of many years; what can I say. After that, I had to relocate two sprinkler heads. While my yard was littered with trenches and big clumps of grassy dirt, I went ahead and dug another trench for the shed’s power supply. I used schedule 80 conduit and a 25’ length of 12-2 W/G outdoor wire—the wire could probably have been buried directly, but I wanted to have zero problems. This, on a 20 amp breaker, will provide plenty of power with very little voltage drop due to resistance. I could have used smaller gauge wire, but I’d rather be on the safe side. I need enough power to be able to run the little air conditioner my neighbor gave me, plus a little heater (alternately, of course).

The walls went up pretty quickly. I laid them out on 24” centers, which is plenty for a shed. Most sheds are framed up like this, only they use 2x3s instead of the 2x4s I used, so it’ll be plenty strong. The easiest way to build a wall is to precut your top and bottom plates and then layout your stud locations with both of them sandwiched together. When you’re ready to nail everything together, you’ll have perfectly plumb and square studs. Once the frame of the wall was nailed together, I laid out the sheathing on it before standing it up. I nailed my OSB sheathing along the top edge of the wall, allowing it to drape down. I then could rack the wall for plumb if needed, then nail off the sheathing after the wall was braced.

The second wall was nearly a tragedy, because the wind came up a bit, and I foolishly decided to stand the wall up in these gusts. April helped me out by smooshing herself between the wall and the fence until I had everything nailed off. The corner where the two walls meet is critical; it’s gotta be plumb in both directions, so it was a bit of a faff until the bottom plate was nailed down, the corner nailed off, and the free end braced. The third wall, you’ll notice, has been framed out for a large set of double doors. This will be the entrance to the shed. I’ve left its free end incomplete for now, because I’m waiting on a sliding glass door for the office section. Until that’s on site, I don’t want to build anything, just in case the rough opening isn’t quite as advertised. It would suck to have to modify a wall I only just built.

So the next step is to finish the walls. Once those are done, my brother and I can roll the trusses and finish the roof. That’ll be next month. Thanks for tuning in here. It’s pretty exciting!