Thursday, April 21, 2011

How to build your outdoor shed's floor




Before starting building the floor, it’s advised to build a foundation. The floor frame will be placed upon it.
Using treated wood is very important, as it will be permanently in contact with soil moisture. Besides, if it is your intention to store tools or machines they will probably be constantly wet and by this way your shed floor will not last for long. 

The following scheme is an example of a possible floor structure:

Shed floor frame


As you can see the structure is very simple. It’s composed by two main boards, two edge boards, the middle boards and finally plywood or other type of coating. 

Steps

In first place it’s necessary to cut all the elements with the proper length. It’s very important to guarantee that the elements that should have the same length do have it in fact. Because in other way after assembling everything you’ll get a crooked frame. 

Then, mark in the main boards the place where all the other boards will be nailed in. Ensure you put them equally spaced in order to distribute the weight correctly. Another important point is not to leave too much space between boards because that will weaken the plywood support.

Dispose the elements on the ground and verify if everything is as it should be. If so, assemble the structure using nails or screws with appropriate length.  

After that is time to place the floor frame upon the shed’s foundations. Ensure the foundations offer a solid, balanced support to the floor. Remember it will support the whole shed weight, so if there is something not correct with it you’re still on time to change it.

Fix the frame to the foundations. This will depend on the type of foundation chosen – there are many different techniques. 

To finish the floor, cover the frame with plywood, or another material you think appropriate.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

How to paint your outdoor shed




It’s important to know how to paint your outdoor shed correctly. Not only to increase the quality of your work, but also to protect it against the elements. Bellow you will find tips and the most important steps to help you do it.

Follow the steps:
Picture Owner

First of all, you need to clean the painting area. Use a brush to remove the dust, spider-webs or other rubbish that may affect the quality of your work. If necessary, you can wash it with a hose or a water pressured machine.

After let the shed drying sand wood imperfections and loose paint. This will unify the painting and ensure the new paint adhere better (and last longer).

Protect the parts you don’t want to paint, like windows. You can use old newspapers, for example.

Before start painting it’s important to apply wood treatment to protect it. Don’t forget to use gloves from now on because this kind of products may be harmful for your skin.

How to paint a shed
After the treatment dry, paint a primary coat. This will make the final result look better and also increase the wood protection. After waiting a couple hours you can apply the paint itself. As sheds are big structures is better to use a painting roller. However a small brush is also useful to paint spots the roller can’t, like corners.

To improve the final result, ensure you paint always in the same direction.

If after the first coat you notice that the result is not solid you can repeat and paint another coat, since you respect the first’s drying time.

Monday, April 11, 2011

The versatility of having a shed




Picture Owner

Everybody has a variety of old useless stuff that doesn’t want to get rid of because it has sentimental value or simply because more important things need to occupy the space: the kid’s toys, old furniture, old school material. Outdoor sheds can be useful to store those things. You will probably store them and never touch them again for months or years, just like what happens here home. But it’s good to think that they still belong to us and are safe.
If you own a garden, sheds are also very useful to keep the gardening tools, lawn mowers and other things organized and tidy. Larger sheds can also store tractors and other bigger machines, such as quads. Some use sheds to put firewood. It’s a way to keep it dry and ready to use. 

Firewood Shed - Picture Owner

For younger people having a separated spot to receive friends and have a good time is a great idea. For even younger people shed may work as playground. It’s a dream for most kids. Of course the older ones can have their own spot too: make a workshop of it. 

As you can see outdoor sheds are very versatile. Nowadays it’s rare to see a spacious property without one. It’s simply a very good investment. And can be a very beautiful adornment to your house and garden too. Some constructions when properly built can become authentic architecture beauties.

And you, have you thought about building your own shed?

 
Garden Shed - Picture Owner


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Thursday, April 7, 2011

Building your outdoor shed's ramp




Important advices

If you have a wooden floor, ideally the shed should be about 15 cm distant of the ground, to keep it away of moisture. So having a ramp will be necessary to store heavy machines like tractors. Although it seems to be an easy project – and it is, when compared to building the shed itself – it’s important to build a strong structure to ensure it doesn’t break while driving something heavy through it.

The first and most important issue I would like to talk about is the slope. It may be a temptation to build a steeper ramp because it will be shorter and you’ll save space.  However you must build something functional and secure.  You want to save your tractor easily and without the risk of tip. Such a heavy machine could cause serious injuries in that situation. Another important point is that with a big slope ramp your tractor might scrape the top of it, especially if it has additional devices. It’s also important to ensure that it is large enough to keep a security margin.

Ramps are usually made of metal or wood. If you don’t want to build one, some companies sell them if you can pay for it. It’s possible to acquire removable ramps with the advantage of only using it when necessary.

If you opt for building a wooden, permanent one, choose treated wood, because the ramp will be in constant contact with humidity so treatment will help to prevent it from rot.

A simple and efficient structure is the one showed bellow:

Shed ramp


It is composed by 3 main elements: the support structure, the lumber that fixes the ramp to the shed and the ramp coating.

The fixative lumber should have enough length to support the ramp width.
The support structure will distribute the force applied on the ramp. Build a ramp with at least 3 support pieces of wood: two at the extreme sides and one at the middle, all separated by equal distances. By this way will have a proportional distribution of weight. If you only apply them in the sides you will leave the middle with no support and the risk of breaking there will be high. Of course it will depend on the ramp width and in what you want to use it for. A ramp with a narrow width can require only two and a larger one can require more than three. The more support elements you use the more robust your ramp will be but the weight force on the link lumber will increase. So the ideal is to find the equilibrium.

Main steps

1.Prepare the pavement: level the part where the support structure will settle down.

2.Cut the support lumber with the correct size. You’ll have to make two cuts, which will depend on the slope you pretend for your ramp: one to fit in the ground and another to fit in the link board.

3.Screw the link board to the shed entrance beam and fix the support plaques to it. Ensure you leave space for the coating: measure its thickness and leave that value, in order to the ramp be perfectly aligned with the shed floor. 

4.Finally coat the structure with several boards or apply plywood to it.

In addiction you can nail rubber wedges in order to get traction. They will help a lot in rainy conditions.

Another solution

There are other structure possibilities. This site offer free shed plans as a sample of their product which include information about how to build a ramp in a different way. All you have to do is to fill the form in the site's bottom with your first name and e-mail adress (the form may also appear in the left side after entering the site). Then an e-mail will be sent to you with downloadable plans.

If you have other building ideas share them leaving a comment below. The blog readers and myself will apreciate that.



Good luck building your ramp!



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