Thread: Lemerv's shed build

Hey everyone, as is tradition I thought I'd put together a post detailing my journey to renovate my shed. What follows is the result of a lot of help from this community, a lot of swearing, some sore muscles, some (maybe) useful info and lessons learnt, and a final result which I am pretty happy with (spoiler alert!). For reference, I had little to no experience with this type of renovation work so take everything you read with a grain of salt.

At the very end I'll have a list (with links where relevant) of materials I used, which anyone else attempting something similar might find useful.

My Shed
It's a single car garage. 7260 long by 3650 wide. It's old (mid 80's) and had a concrete slab floor which was pretty wavy and has some large cracks. The whole floor was on a slope as well. The interior was cladded with masonite on the walls and ceiling.

A7B7D5B8-41FB-4406-B3DB-7A1722103DA1.jpeg

It actually looks pretty good in the photo. But the carpet tiles were old and musty and still followed the wavy cracked floor. The masonite walls were full of cracks and holes. And (as you will soon find out) full of other stuff too...

96C13197-02F1-4806-A3F2-13F4EB65FB80.jpeg

Big crack in the floor.

D3977FD5-4A08-46D4-B505-7E72F6F68E9C.jpeg

Full of all my crap.

Demolition

Demolition was fun...for about the first 10 minutes. I had an asbestos guy come and confirm everything was safe before starting, which it was. Turns out Robert is a fellow woodworker! Cheers Robert!

Starting to pull the wall panels off.
15084BFF-AF42-42C1-8081-71B2F63CCCFE.jpeg

Dismantling the bench. Have kept all the timber (I think it's blue gum) and will use it to build some stuff down the track.

9930C259-1609-439A-8142-6C017452F96B.jpeg

Playing tetris with my tools while pulling down the roof panels.

DEF5E34B-36D3-43F4-8930-D838BD89EB69.jpeg

E01B115A-809B-4B20-9D68-E2D4A21F5EB2.jpeg

This is what was in the walls and the roof. Mountains of roach poo. I literally showered in the stuff. Once everything was cleared out I let of a few bug bombs and counted 76 dead roaches the next morning.

796AC83A-CCC2-4D93-B5C1-C11838B96FFF.jpeg

Spot on with my choice of skip bin size.

6626706D-1A17-4D06-A4F4-172CCC902C65.jpeg

All cleared out and ready for a new floor.l


The Plan

As you can read in my other Levelling shed floor with yellow tongue over pine joists post, the plan was to level the shed floor with yellow tongue over pine joists

After much research and many questions here, I felt confident to start the job. In a nutshell:

• 70 x 35mm H3 pine joists, laid flat
• Two boxes of assorted window packers for levelling
• A green laser level (one with good rating from amazon)
• Home-made story stick
• 100mm H-IT anchors from Scrooz and corresponding masonry bit (get a spare or two - they do break)
• 200um ultra tough plastic sheet form big green shed
• Ozito rotary hammer drill kit (cheap but it did the job - just rest the motor if it starts getting hot to prevent it burning out)
• 1.8kg lump hammer
• Straw tube vacuum dust fitting thingy

​The Build: Part 1


With the aim of creating a flat and level floor, I started with the laser level and a story stick.

10114CD7-2874-4AA2-968D-A6FA2507C6D9.jpeg

I worked out the highest spot (conveniently in one of the corners) and marked it for later. I then lay down my plastic sheeting.

FCF8BAE9-E758-42A6-A27A-E2154B162D01.jpeg

Using the laser, I laid out my bounding box and packed it up to size. This is where I made a mistake (see it?) and repeated said mistake throughout the levelling process. I'll come back to that. But for now, things are going good and I've drilled some holes, packed my bounding box, and smashed in some HIT anchors.

44570C2E-F5F4-43A8-B510-11D5E929A0F1.jpeg

The straw vacuum dust thingy was customised to suck dust from my freshly drilled holes. It worked reasonably well, but clogged up a bit. I kept the cut offs which meant when a straw got bent or clogged, I just pulled it out and shoved in a fresh one.

91F8B9F9-20AF-400D-AA2E-A3294C5293D6.jpeg

Now that the bounding box was done, I started preparing my joists by measuring and cutting them to size and starting to lay everything out. I went with 300mm joist centres. Since I had the bounding box secured, I just measured and marked the centre line for each joist rather than using spacers.

498DBA70-5FB7-4D82-B849-65BC081633A7.jpeg
02F9650A-D1F7-4E44-B1C4-43D6008F0A25.jpeg

At this point, the layout looking good, it was time to start drilling, packing, and H-ITting. A note here on the method. Some people suggested packing the joists in place and then drilling through the joist and concrete in one go, then hammering in the anchor. I tried this but I ran into problems with not being able to get the dust out of the hole, or struggling to drill cleanly. I ended up taking more time and doing the following:

• Mark where I wanted the hole on the joist
• Laying it flat and drilling through at one end and into the concrete
• Sticking a screw driver into the hole to hold the joist inline with that hole
• Repeat at the other end
• Now the joist is secure at both ends
• Drill the rest of the holes
• Move the joist and vacuum the dust from the holes
• THEN pack it and hammer in the anchors

This worked pretty well. I would say it took a lot longer, but such is life.

I also want to talk about the levelling method. As per another suggestion here I went with the string line method. Basically run a series of string lines the length of the room using my already levelled and secure joists at each end as reference. Then put 10mm packers under the string line an each end. The idea being I can then raise all the joists up to the point where I can just slip a 10mm packer under the string line and know it is level. Well, for me this was a good idea in theory but not in practice. Getting the packing just right was hard. Not to mention the multiple times something was interfering with the string line (like accidentally placing something on top of it at the other end of the room). In each case it was totally my fault, but I think just using the laser and story stick is a better option (but has its own issues as I will touch on later).

So away I went, drilling holes, packing joints, and hammering anchors. Until I was finally finished!

2D5DFEA9-2D49-4C75-BD9D-B4BC43432B42.jpeg

It looked great! But there was one small problem...

53FBDC99-1A37-480F-93C3-0D7708EB03EA.jpeg

Things were not level As mentioned above, the string line method did not work for me. So I had to re-measure every anchor point, but this time using the laser and story stick. I wrote notes and labels all over the place to know what to correct and by how much. And what a doozy I had made. I was off all over the place by weird amounts. Don't ask me how I got it so wrong...

370CCCF6-627B-4CED-855C-78B30CBE8AF3.jpeg

So back with the laser and story stick to rectify. I found that I could simply hammer in more packers and it would force the anchor up a bit and allow the joist to be raised to the correct height. So I spent hours doing that, only to discover.....I had stuffed it up again

Ok so my story stick is a 30x30mm piece of pine. It has a flat bottom. Turns out, unless you carefully place this on your surface so that it is fully "mated" then the reading can vary! Why didn't I notice this earlier? Because I was fed up and rushing to get it done in the rare windows I had to work on the shed. I also thought that "close was close enough" (as you can see in my earlier photo where the laser line is not bang on the mark. Why? Because I'm an idiot and I was rushing. This comedy of errors ended up costing me way more time than if I had just slowed down and done it right the first time. A humbling lesson learnt.

Anyway, round three of levelling ensued. I took my time and double checked everything. My joists had so many markings on them at this point it was like a Jackson Pollock. But I eventually got it all sorted and the whole thing was level to within 1mm across the whole floor.

FC0F1F12-2023-4727-95BD-E258BD5388DA.jpeg

I'm calling a night now. Will be back soon with the next episode: yellow tongue floor.

Thanks for reading this far! Hope this is of help to someone thinking about undertaking a similar project.

A few more random shots.

8EC8D49E-00C6-4F8C-81FB-B16B42C45E0D.jpeg
Close up of the crack

DF1B6520-5903-45C7-89C9-2869B613AE52.jpeg
Sealing gaps to help with moisture and critters

D9D3C931-C047-4BC0-9706-5F32404B764E.jpeg
Screwed up placement of one end joist. But actually this worked out fine so just went with it