Our house suffers from lack of outdoor storage space. We have a lot of crap that doesn’t really need to be stored in the house. Bikes, tools, toys, Burning Man stuff, etc. Our bikes are currently inhabiting our bedroom. Not an ideal solution. So we decided our first really major upgrade to our property was going to be some sort of an outbuilding. We tossed around several ideas, including building a full garage, a small shed, or a larger shed/shop. After weighing the options and costs of the three, we settled for the latter.  I sat down and drew out plans for a 10′x20′ structure with a wood floor. The foundation is 6 deck blocks (the big concrete footers with imprints for 2×6’s).

I started by measuring out the area and getting it all level. Because of the slope of the property, the front needed to be raised and the rear needed to be sunk into the ground. Excavating large amounts of dirt wasn’t really an option due to the roots of our large Pine tree.  I started building the floor on possibly the worst day of the year. I got snowed on, sleeted on, rained on and everything was blowing around. I managed to get the floor done though then I decided to sleep on it until after the holiday season.

After weeks of rain, it was finally nice this morning for a while so Andrea and I decided it would be a good day to get more done. I started the morning by going to Sears and spending a portion of the gift card given to us by Andrea’s mom (thanks Donna!) on a new sliding composite miter saw. This makes the job of cutting wall studs and the like much easier and faster.

Also, one of the decisions we made about the structure was that we wanted to build it from as much recycled lumber as possible. We went to the Rebuilding Center last week and got 70 2×4s of various lengths, the majority of which needed to be cut to 7′. The miter saw made quick work of this.We had intended to get the walls put together today, but the weather, once again, refused to cooperate. We got all the lumber cut to length, then it started raining and getting really windy, so we decided to bag it. Here are some pics of our progress so far.

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Andrea standing in front of the shed floor with the lumber and her measuring jig.

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Measuring and stacking.

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Dusty helping out with the measuring process.

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Dog kisses!

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Cutting boards to length with my new miter saw.

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My new saw.

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