The shed arrived as two boxes, weighing close to 200 lbs apiece. Lowes delivered them strapped to a pallet and the driver used the Moffett to take them halfway to the back yard before running out of room. I trundled them individually the rest of the way to the patio with a hand truck and my “buddy.”
How many people build shed platforms with a rotary laser? I was glad to have it, and got it pretty much dead on—maybe 1⁄8" low over 8' on the front edge. That’s a function of the labor involved moving material—not the fault of the laser.
Foundation was about 6" deep around the periphery for footings, ≈3" of pea gravel in the trenches, then the timbers.
This shows the detail of the joint where the beams meet, and the pea gravel screeded (scred?) flat prior to installing the floor.
The center wound up being a fairly uniform 3" or so below the timber tops, then filled with pea gravel.
The floor was just three interlocking pieces and was the first step in assembling the shed. We were surprised how substantial this felt with the pea gravel underlayment.
Here’s my buddy, the foreman, cracking the whip. She’s very susceptible to mosquitoes, thus the garb.
Partway around installing the wall sections. Only downside, discovered at around this point, was that fence being within about 10" of the back of the shed. It made for some contortions due to the process needed to put the panels up.
All the wall sections up. I think we called it a day once we got this far. There had been a lot of preparation (cutting half laps in the beams, excavation, screeding gravel, etc.) to get to this point. We ordered one yard of gravel. Amazingly, we used all but ½ of a five gallon pail of it.
Next we started installing roof sections. The greenish skylight lenses needed weatherizing with a butyl tape included in the package. However, it had not survived the packing and was useless. Of course I discovered this on Saturday and had to wait until Monday to order replacements. Turned out okay, however.
My impromptu “workbench.” I didn’t actually use the air tank—I thought I was going to, so I brought it out. This worked really well for staging parts and in some cases, some minor subassembly.
Our little shed in the woods. It’s surprisingly unobtrusive for a nominal 8'×8' structure.
I was criticized for not showing the window, which is on the other side wall, but this view captures the “woodsy” feel better. Do you really need to see the window?
It’s also pretty roomy. The black shelves weren’t part of the package—we’d had those hanging around the Florida room for some time. I’m not even sure where/when we got them, but they’re perfect for this application.
Wanting to keep detritius out of the shed for as long as possible, I installed these 16"×16" flagstones. Pea gravel over landscape fabric, then sand, tamped and leveled for the stones.
This is a corner detail showing the flags and the run of river stone I put along either side of the shed to capture/disperse rain runoff. I think a small potted plant will look nice in each of those niches on either side of the flagstones.
We have a section of fence dividing the back yard, with this gate for passage. With my newly acquired flagstone protocol (and gravel and sand on hand), I installed a couple of 20" flags in the opening to limit wear and tear on the ground where the traffic is concentrated.
A closeup of the gate flagstones.
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