Saturday, July 9, 2011

Liability or Asset: Another "Junk" Building?

Our little green shed originally looked like all of the other structures at our place - surrounded by, and filled with, junk. We could have just hired somebody to dumpster the whole mess, building and all, but we decide to give this neglected shed a fighting chance so we removed the junk, inside and out.


It looks a lot better now, and is nicely centered between our garden and orchard.


The remaining question was the north side which was rotted out at the base due to people piling junk and soil on both sides of it. The sill plate was completely gone and the lower portion of siding was rotted away. Here you can see that the vertical supports are literally swinging in the breeze.



All of this resulted in a huge sag in the roof on that side. Can't find a good picture of the sag but here you can see the rotted siding from the outside. Believe it or not, soil was piled up to the rot-line!


So here's what I did...

Installed new sill plate:



Jacked the roof up using some post jacks (you can see the sag if you look at the bend in the top plate of the wall):



Repaired vertical supports (2x4's on either side and 4x4 spacer under):



Removed/replaced the rotten siding:







Note the roof line - pretty darn straight! The door to the left of the plywood patching needs replaced but that's a quick job compared with this roof jacking job.


Now to organize the inside (it will be used for material storage for Steve's woodworking creations)...


We will probably paint the metal roof green and the siding red! No longer neglected, this little building will serve us well.

3 comments:

  1. I would have taken one look at that rot and shifted to arson-planning-mode. You guys are crazy.

    In a good way, of course.

    I really wanna know: What can't you do? Have you ever been utterly stumped by a project?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Holy Cow, Jennifer and Steve! I leave you alone for a couple weeks (sorry about that, been so busy!) and look at all you've accomplished. You are inspiration incarnate...truly, you are. Loving all the renewing you're doing. Can't wait to see the shed painted...one of these days I'll get my coop painted! ~Vonnie, NH

    ReplyDelete
  3. we rebuilt our shop (a two car garage) exactly that way. the roof was essentially sound but termites had eaten up the bottom 12". the only thing holding it up was the sheetrock. We rebuilt it one wall at a time. Jacked it up the roof, tore out the wall, re-framed it, attached it to the roof. next wall same as before.

    ReplyDelete

We love to hear from our readers! Please share your thoughts.