We Built A Shed - Life Under Budget

What do you do when you are going a little stir crazy and have a project just sitting in the garage?

You build that dang shed!

We like to call it… The Pandemic Shed

Granted, we are very fortunate to both still be working in these uncertain times while also remaining healthy and home during off work hours.

Some Backstory

The need for the shed started long ago when we ran out of space in the garage. I’m sure you know, the lawn mower just eats space along with all the other yard accouterments. To make matters worse, we only have a tiny single car garage. Also, I take blame for adding to the lack of space in there. I have turned into one of those people I never thought I would be…a garage hoarder. It has become my storage place for half finished or just not even started projects. They stay in there in hopes of more time, warmer weather; but not too hot, and the lifting of my decision paralysis.

So, we needed a shed!

But I wouldn’t do myself justice if I didn’t start by researching just about every aspect about different types of sheds.

Ranging from building it ourselves from scratch, a simple fabricated one to piece together, or just having someone do the whole dang thing for us.

Best option time wise was to bite the bullet and have someone build it for us, but that also included the highest cost of materials AND labor. So I kinda “poo-pooed” that suggestion because of the cost.

Looking at the pre-made sheds at Lowe’s and Home Depot left a lot to be desired. I’m not a huge fan of the barn look as it would be slightly out of place at our house (even though our house is a ranch style.) But, it wasn’t the end of the world if that was the decision and the price was right…but it wasn’t.

Ideally I was thinking of building a more modern looking shed ourselves completely from scratch. I made a rough sketch for what it would look like. We just needed to figure out the dimensions, then go get some lumber and supplies.

It was settled- the shed would be a summer project and we would figure out those details later.

It wasn’t until a trip to Costco that we spotted a pre-made modern looking shed. Standing in front of it, we knew we hit the shed jackpot.

The shed checked everything on my weird shed list…because who really cares about the way a shed looks, but I guess me.

Modern
Gray/Neutral color scheme
Pre-made
Reasonably priced

Thank you Costco!

Since the shed was slated to be a summer project, we were nowhere near ready to put it together.

First off, we had no foundation ready for it to live on in the backyard. We still needed to put down the pavers in the empty dirt patch. The paver pad was a whole other project in itself!

So into the garage the shed boxes went!

Enter COVID-19

After a couple weeks of adjusting to our new normal we got restless. What else do we have to do right now stuck at home but dig in the dirt! So that’s just what we did one weekend.

We rounded up some help from our Quarantine Crew and the team consisted of:

Gunnar’s Dad: Strength- Knowledge and skill. Weakness- Skipping ahead of directions.

Gunnar: Strength- Ability to lift heavy objects and willingness to get stuff done. Weakness- Joking that he hurt himself.

Myself: Strength- Attention to detail and organized. Weakness- Easily overwhelmed by 40+ pages of directions.

Rosie (Basset Hound): Strength- Cuteness and that’s about it. Weakness- Running off with the exact piece you are looking for.

Building The Paver Pad

Gunnar dug out and leveled an area in the corner of the yard in preparation.

There was an irrigation spigot that was going to be in the way of the paver pad. We weren’t use it so we decided to remove it, cut the pipe back, and cap the end off away from the paver area. That way if in the future we had a leak it would not be under the pad and warp the foundation of the shed. That would have been a real pain to fix.

Then Gunnar and his dad started laying out the pavers and making them level with some sand.

Once all the pavers were down, they pounded in stakes around the perimeter of the pad to keep the pavers in place. Finally, we filled the gaps with even finer sand and watered it down to secure the foundation.

Now Building The Shed

We had a good system going: Gunnar and his dad would do all the heavy lifting/building and I would make sense of the terrible directions to delegate the next steps.

It actually worked out really well once we got the hang of it. There were still a few times where I believe the directions were written out of order, but we made due.