Escape from Lockdown

We were supposed to visit the Sheep homestead in England this Summer, but obviously those plans were canned a while back. Instead, we managed to sneak up to the Tahoe river for a few days of canoeing, kayaking, paddle boarding, and biking. We also stayed at an AirBnB with a decent pool table. Check out the highlights:

(*we didn't get any footage of the water based activities due to not having a waterproof camcorder just yet).

Garden Shed part six

Welcome to another compilation of progress rather than a single day's work. I could have written this up sooner, but I've been busy with work...yada, yada....no I'm not complaining...yada, yada....but a break would be nice....

So.....the Saturday before last Sam and I plodded out to the back yard about mid-morning and got cracking. I started off by tinkering with the doors - I wanted to make some stops that prevent the doors from opening inwards. While I was doing that, Sam fired up the orbital sander and went to work on all the globs of excess wood filler Amy Sheep plastered on the weekend before.

After that we snuck off to the workshop to escape from the sun, and fabricated a sort-of door pocket/tool holder thingy for storing small tools and other tat. This is how it looks installed on the inside of the door. I came up with the concept and Sam did all the cutting and joining. We made one for each door.

We also installed some fine wire mesh between the rafters - the shed should be very well ventilated and inaccessible to all but the smallest critters.

We had a break for lunch, and then we carried the first batch of garden tools out to the backyard...

It would be nice if each tool had it's own bay, but we don't have a shed big enough for that...

The door pockets may need some refinement, but this is the basic concept:

This is later after we transferred the hooks that used to hang in the unfinished part of out basement:

I painted primer on the trim that Sam sanded first thing, and then we called it a day.

The next day was Sunday so we gave the shed a wide berth and headed over to Golden Gate park for a spot of what the locals call quad biking.

Fast forward to the weekend that just passed by, and Amy Sheep and I found ourselves in the backyard with a clear mission: Finish the shed or bust! Amy set things rolling by painting the trim - two (2) coats of white dove semi-gloss if you're keeping score.

I worked on refining our tool storage: 

After lunch we put two (2) coats of exterior-wall-color paint on the bits of the shed that are not trim, and that was it: Finito!

Stay tooned to find out what all these tools are going to be used for.....!

Garden Shed part five

Now here's something: It's been three weeks more or less since my last post, and we've done something towards the shed every weekend....but each increment wasn't really worthy of an independent blog post, and, well...I've been busier than ever with work. So this post is a compilation of our recent-ish progress.

The is how the shed looked when we ambled out to the back yard the day after episode four, following a very adequate breakfast of French toast and non-shatterproof streaky bacon:

The first job was to install some tar paper over the roof sheeting we put down the day before. I put the "roof team" to work on that...

While the roof team was hard at it, Amy and I cut and installed the rest of the siding, although it's difficult to see that in the following picture:

Before we went any further, the rafter tails at the front which will remain exposed to the elements needed priming:

With the priming under control, I helped Samuel Sheep install the roof covering. We're using composition/asphalt shingles in slate gray if you're interested. Sam installed the shingles and I did the cutting and staple gun refilling. We actually used an electric-powered carpet tacker, which fires staples with a 3/16th crown, half the width of common staples - it wasn't the ideal tool, but Sam made it work.

We were using shingles that were left over from patching around the skylight that we installed last Fall, and we ran out halfway through the roof:

We did not run out of primer:

The next photo was taken almost two weeks later - fortunately we picked up some more shingles in the interim:

While Sam was working on the roof, Ruby Sheep got to work on priming the timber we'll be using to construct the doors:

The priming was accompanied by the constant pop-pop-ping of the carpet tacker...

Quinn Sheep kept up with developments from a safe distance...

It came out just like a professionally installed roof:

After that we had to break for Monopoly™

This weekend - the one that will end in about 30 minutes at the time of writing - it was just Amy and I plodding away. After a very adequate lie-in on Saturday we started chipping away at the custom doors. The siding at the front of the shed is made from two 8' x 4' foot panels. I trimmed about eighteen (18) inches off the top of the panels, and then cut out the space for the doors....well, the doors will be made from the cut out pieces. The siding material is 7/16 thick, so they need some beefing up.

The first step was to install a 1" x 3" pine board at the left side which the hinges will bolt into. We did our best to get this piece straight n' true:

This is later after the first door has been fabricated and installed. The pine trim is all 1"x 3", but we ran out of pre-primed material and Ruby Sheep was not on hand to rescue us.

The is the interior look - this side will probably never get painted. The location of the trim is identical to the front; this adds strength and allows us to use longer screws to attach the trim. Time for a spot of luncheon. 

Lining up the siding to start the second door...

Both doors installed, hardware fitted and all the screw holes filled with bondo:

We nailed on L-shaped steel flashings at all four corners....

...and then I put similar darker colored material around the perimeter of the roof - I should have got the ladder back out to take a proper photo really.

We had plans for Sunday that didn't involve sanding bondo or hanging garden tools, so this was as far as we got. Still, it is starting to look more like a shed than a bus shelter at long last!

Tune in next time to see how it looks painted and over-filled with spades, rakes and other related tat!

Garden Shed part four

As you can see from my post tally, I've gone from updating my blog every other day to posting twice a month at best, and it's all due to my day job taking over; last weekend I was so overwhelmed with work that I didn't even set foot in the workshop....

This Saturday though, it was different: the bin lids were back in town and ready to rock and we had a shed to work on! After case-hardened waffles and non-shatter-proof bacon for breakfast, we dispatched Quinn and Amy to the local lumber yard to pick up supplies, and Sam, Ruby and myself set up our backyard workshop.

We started off by filling-in the final wall that we didn't quite manage to finish last time; we did actully cut the timber last time though, so the wall went up pretty quickly and then Sam nailed on the top plate.

Now it was roof time! Sam and I used trigonometry to figure the roof angle is 18 degrees, and then we carefully measured for the rafter length and where to place the birds eyes. It took a little while to create the perfect rafter, and we were just about finished when Quinn and Amy got back from the lumber yard with the next batch of material. After a quick cuppa tea, we lined up our new material and went into mass production.

We used our first rafter and a framing square to scribe all the others, and then we bevelled all the ends with one pass of the circular saw, and cut them all to length with a second pass. We need a double birdsmouth for this style of roof. The two heel were made with the circular saw set to 18 degrees and a depth of about an inch and a quarter.

We had to make the seat cuts with the jigsaw one at a time...

This is how it looks installed:

We used double rafters at the sides of the roof which are made by nailing two boards together, and yes, this level of strength is total overkill for what we are building.

Time to scatter the rafters and install them. This was a three man operation:

Once all the rafters were secured we crafted some blocks to fit between the end rafter and the side walls, and Sam nailed them in nice and tight:

On to the sheeting. Sam and Quinn risked life and limb to install the roof sheeting:

That was it for the day, except...

....there was just enough time for a quick stress test:

To be continued....