It’s been raining – a lot!! 
So not much progress on the shed. It’s been sitting like this for much of the last couple of weeks:
I have managed to do a small bit of work on the opposite side of the same level as the shed. Whilst I’ve levelled out the majority of the space there is still a step between our garden and next door. I’ve left a gap of a couple of feet which will be planted with hedging in due course. For the moment I’ve fixed some retaining wood which keeps everything nice and tidy. Can be seen on the right hand side of pic 2:
Posts Tagged: wall
16
May 09
Retained by the wet weather
26
Apr 09
Roof ‘n joints
The more observant out there will have wondered how the shed walls I built were going to stay up. 4inch screws into the base might hold the bottom but would soon fail if nothing was done at the top. To overcome this I installed M10 nuts, washers and thread in 3 locations at each corner and tightened. No chance of these walls coming apart now!
I’m afraid the pics kinda skip some of the next steps I cut the rafters, ridge etc for the roof and screwed on top of my walls. End result is this, you can also see that I’ve installed some of the noggins in the walls and made a start on boarding the inside with marine ply:
With base structure finished I screwed more exterior play to the roof and then covered with roofing paper:
The final roofing cover is going to be asphalt shingles from Wickes. In this pic I’ve made a start on installing the edging:
17
Apr 09
Shed walls
I’m continuing the same principles for the walls as for the shed base. Namely using thicker materials than usual to ensure good structure. All of the frames and joints were pre-drilled and screwed.
I started each wall by building the frame on the shed base which I know is flat and level – makes checking for square etc much easier.
Once the basic wall frame is made it’s stacked out of the way:
I then put a couple of walls in place and used some clamps to hold them together at the corner. You’ll notice in the right hand side wall I’ve made an opening for a window – a double glazed unit recycled from the conservatory we took down a while back:
The frames for the front wall were much narrower to make room for door frame to be fitted. You’ll see them in progress on the floor here:
Here’s all the basic frames constructed and clamped together:
Final part here is to secure them to the base frame – achieved with lots of 4inch screws 
7
Jan 09
Sleeper wall part 2
New year, new wall.
If you read the earlier post on the back sleeper wall you’ll get the general idea. Dig some (deep 
) pis to take some upright sleepers, buried a 3rd of their length. Concrete sleepers into those and then bolt other sleepers onto the front. Simples! Not nice carrying all these up the garden slope though
Pic of part completed wall
Another angle. Here you can see a recess for steps – more pics of that to follow.
View to the back wall. Still some filling/levelling to do but getting there.
3
Jun 08
Making something . . . at last
It’s taken a while but finally instead of smashing, breaking, stripping and generally demolishing we’ve actually started to build something!!
Having dug out the bank at the back of the garden we could now move onto building a retaining wall along the back. I decided to make these walls out of railway sleepers. I got a very good price from one of our local timber merchants (perhaps they couldn’t believe how many we needed!!). It’s also much easier for me to build with wood than bricks. Whatever I decided to use the job of hauling the materials up the sloping garden was going to be a pain in the a***, and so it proved.
Anyhow I carried enough sleepers up the garden to make a start. Having marked out I used some sleepers as giant fence posts, burying a 3rd of their length in the ground. This mean digging holes almost a meter deep in the ground. The first foot was easy digging through clay soil. Then came the more difficult ’shaley’ slate. This had to be broken up with a heavy duty digging spike before it could be lifted out. As if that wasn’t enough at the bottom of several holes were large granite field stones (you can see some of them on the right of the 2nd picture). These stones only revealed themselves after I had dug down most of the way – too late to shift the post to another location. More digging . .. . . .
Finally holes were dug and posts concreted into place. Postcrete is great for this – pour a couple of bags into the hole, add water on top and tamp down. Job done. . . .. . .well except for levelling, not easy with posts this size.
I did eventually get all the posts up and you can see I’ve started fixing other sleepers to the front with coach bolts. I’ve also got some metal straps in their for extra support, 300mm screws are also added at ’strategic’ points.
