Small shed

Storage spaces seem to be the problem that many homeowners are facing. There are many types of storage sheds that are manufactured. To save money, you can buy all these shed kits that you can put together yourself. However, they come with a size that requires you to have a big enough yard to put it in. As the lot for the new house getting smaller and smaller, homeowners like me find ourselves with small yard and adding a shed can mean no yard. Home improvement stores also sale these small plastic shed that too small to store my tools and to expensive if buying several so I decide to build one myself.

The shed size is about 8 ft x 3 ft x 6ft since I only have about 3 feet between the house and the fence.
Below is the picture of the finished shed that I built.

First step is to build a frame for the shed.
The picture below is for the front of the shed.

For the front, I cut 8 piece of 2x4 to a 6 ft length since I want the shed to be 6 ft in height. For the top and bottom front, use the 2 ft wood left over from the 6 ft cut.
For the back frame, I have them at 8 feet so I don't have to make any cut for them

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Since this shed will lay next to the fence to save space, I go ahead and attach the back using metal corrugated sheet laying side way



In my case, I want the shed to be above ground to prevent rotting so I pour 2 concrete column in the ground. You can do the same thing or just use the concrete deck blocks that are available on the home improvement store.
As in the picture, you see the base sit on the concrete base that I poured on the left bottom of the picture.
For the base, I used pressure treated lumber to prevent rot. As you see, I also add a strong tie to hold the base down.
And the next step is to attach the back frame on top, as in the picture.

Next I attached the front to finish the frame.

Next step is to add the siding. I use hardy plank for my shed so it match the back of my house.
This is the first time I cut Hardie plank, and I found it really easy to cut to length with just the utility knife. We just need to score it with the knife. To be sure it's a clean snap, I score both sides. After that I clamped it against the edge of a table and just break it.

Next, I secured the sidings to the frame that we previously built

For the door, I bought a 4 x 8 ft plywood, have the store cut them down to 6 ft length and another cut in the middle so I ended up with 2  2ft by 6 ft.
I add 3 strip of wood to re-enforce the door where the hinges will locate.
For the top, I also use the metal panel to finish off the shed.

After that, I paint the shed and add the 1.5 in x 1.5 in metal strip for the trim and the shed is finished.

I love this custom shed since it give me both sides for storing the tools that I have and in the middle, I can also store any taller item like the pressure washer in the picture.
This is my first time building a shed, and I choose material and size that save time and money so it may not look as nice as a pro do it but nothing beat the satisfaction of doing it myself. And if you wonder how much it cost, it cost less than the same price of buying a 2 x 4 feet plastic shed at the home improvement store. So I got more than double the storage space with less cost.
I hope this will give you idea on how simple it is to build your own shed.

As always, thanks for reading.

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See you in the next Weekend DIYer tip.