Yesterday we left off with a skeleton of the shed. Today, we are working on the new siding!
We got these pressure-treated, weather-proofing plywood from Lowe’s as new sidings. We are not looking forward to getting it completely sealed. All we need it to function is as a storage for our gardening tools and lawn mower. So plywood + some paint is perfectly sufficient.
Slav cut the plywood to size and bolted them onto the studs with screws:
It was not long before all the sides were up. The studs are not perfectly square – actually, the whole structures slops down to one corner. So there are some gaps between plywood sidings. We will cover them with trims down the road. Slav also cut some odd pieces to fill the gaps between the siding and the roof rafters.
Roxie, the daddy’s girl, was cheerleading for Slav the entire time:
Slav cut the door to size but left it unattached. It is much easier to paint when it is off the hinges.
We also want to paint the trims a different color than the siding, so Slav cut all the trims to size and left them unattached. I am the painter in the family, so the ball is totally in my court now.
This was what Slav left for me at the end of his work day. Clean, organized, every trim labeled, and all tucked under the roof. This man does construction the same way as he does cell culture inside a biosafety hood. Gotta love a man with good work ethics.
As soon as Slav finished his work, it started raining everyday for two weeks. It prevented me from painting the shed, but our lawn could use some water, so the rain was very well received. At the mean time, I did what I could do indoors – paint the door hardware for the shed.
I included door handles from our interior doors too since they all gonna go black. We replaced our stove drip pans a while ago, so I used them to pop up the door handles to make the paint job easier.
We have two black spray paint cans in hand. I had to say that the Rust Oleum one worked waaaay better than the Valspar one for this application. With Rust Oleum I got much better coverage – you really just need one coat. I had to use three coats with the Valspar to make the golden shine disappear.
The rain also gave me some time to think about the storage. Our gardening tools has grown a lot since we moved in. We used to just have a few shovels and racks, and now we have a lot more long-handled tools, a lawn mower, a wheel barrel, two short electrical saws for branches, a long saw for high branches, a hedge trimmer, and two leaf blower/vacuums. We also want to store a trash can in the shed for carbon-rich materials for future composting, such as cardboard, newspaper, and dry branches.
If we are lucky, we may be able to fit the Christmas stuff there too – they are green, right?
The shed is only 8′ x 11′, so we need to be smart on how to store all the tools. We want them to be in a single layer, meaning that you can get to any of them without removing or climbing over mountains of others.
And this is the plan I came up with:
We plan to put three shelves on the left for small tools and garden pots. and build a container at the right corner for lumber storage. The long-handle tools including shovels and racks will be hung along the back wall, so they are easy to reach and off the ground. This plan will give us enough room in the middle to park the lawnmower and wheel barrel. We should still be able to walk around them to get to all the tools.
The rain finally stopped after 15 days. It is time for paint! I got a Wagner paint sprayer a few weeks ago and cannot wait to put it into use. It supposed to make painting large surfaces a lot faster!
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