Feb 4, 2011

Building the family shed

Shortly after we built our house in Mapleton in 1983 I decided that I needed a shed to put garden equipment and other storage items into for increased use of the storage in our home. It was actually a couple of years I think but memory has a way of squashing years together the older you get and it takes some real research to get an accurate time table. Anyway I spent several weeks pondering what shed I would like to build and went to several sources for ideas. The best idea though came form a book called Backyard Builder if I remember it correctly. I saw several sheds in it and did some preliminary drawings to get a better idea of how I could do it. I even took it to Signetics to work and talked with other technicians about it. Finally I came up with a plan. I would build it 20 feet long and 10 foot wide. Why those dimensions I am not really sure now but I remember I wanted to have plenty of room because I was sure it would fill up rather rapidly.
I decided to put the flooring of it on a foundation of 6 buckets filled with cement. No logical reason just didn’t require as much digging or cement. I also wanted to be able to move it if needed since I was building it only three feet from the property line. (It looks like a lot more room than that but that is because the city just hasn’t built the road that they said they are going to build in the future and thus required more footage from me when we asked for a building permit for the house.) I then placed 6inch by 10 inch boards on their side to create the floor. As I built the sides of the shed Marie’s dad Verl brought me some metal strapping material and suggested that I put them on the outside of the framing to help make the structure more solid for earthquake protection. I was a little surprised by that suggestion but through the years have thought about it many times and learned that there was some pretty sound wisdom in his suggestion. It has become my backup living quarters if there should be an earthquake and the house be damaged to where we could not live in it. It would be easy to heat although I would need to add some insulation to the interior walls and a better door but if needed in a pinch we could set up a fairly comfortable home in that shed. Each of the children helped as much as they could with Ben probably adding the most since he was the oldest. I think though that building the shed actually did more for the children than I first thought. I knew I was going to get a shed out of it and in fact it has been a very good investment since I am able to house all of the camping supplies in it as well as several barrels of hard wheat for storage. I gained something else though that has become more apparent over the years and that is the fact that the boys seem to be unafraid of jumping into any building project and doing it themselves. This has been real evident as they have gotten their own homes and done most of the remodeling themselves.
It has changed over the years from housing the garden tractor, lawn mowers and bicycles to more camping gear and misc other storage. In 2008 I added a piece to the south side of it to store the riding lawn mower and 4 wheeler that we use to clean the driveway and entertain the grandchildren. It has always been a good investment but now I need to build another one to house the garden equipment and things that we when we have parties by the fire pit.
I could probably fill it up pretty fast also.