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Retrofitting our old storage building

2929 Views 10 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  steve42, 
steve42
It's something we've been needing to do for years, and we finally decided this weekend to get started on the "big" shed on our property. It's about 10' X 20', 6' tall on the left wall and 9' on the right. The end facing out house is open, and the entire thing is covered in corrugated tin. The previous owners built it out of 4 Creosote posts on the left and 4X4 Pressure Treated on the right. They used 4X8X12 boards for rafters.

It appears that the 4X4s and 4X8s were purchased new for the project and everything else was scrap/salvage wood.At some point, they poured a 3 to 4" thick slab inside (between the walls, not encompassing the posts).

The header on the left side had rotted and the roof was sagging on that side. The some of the salvaged 1X4's they used to span the rafters have also given up.

Saturday morning I removed the tin from the left wall, hoping to be able to reuse some of it. I wedged up the roof on that side and removed the nails that were holding the rafters to the 4 posts. (The other rafters were just hanging there.)

Once the nails were out, I finished raising the roof off the walls and examined the posts. One was rotten at the ground. Another had settled and was too short now. One was set in concrete, and one is wedged so tightly between the slab and a sweetgum tree's roots that it won't come out. All these posts angled inward at about a 5 degree angle so their tops were above the concrete, but their bottoms were beside it. :fing20:

I removed the rotten one and the short one. I used the 4X4 for the front and the 4X6 for the other and placed them on the slab. We've got to go get some Tapcon anchors and my neighbor's hammerdrill to secure them with brackets to the slab.

I built up the tops of the two remaining posts and constructed a 20' 4X4 header out of 2X4s to go on top of the posts toi support the roof. Once I was ready, we removed the temporary supports and carefully lowered the roof onto the new header.

The result of the new posts was two vertical ones and two angled, so I had to build out a bit on the new posts before I added the new lateral strips for attaching the tin to the walls. I finished that at dusk tonight. Hopefully tomorrow, I can get some pics and start hanging the tin.

When I am done with the left wall, the rear wall has to be removed. It has on center support and they ran the corrugated tin horizontally instead of vertically (as they had on the left wall). The right wall was done correctly.:fing20:
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steve42
4
In this first set of pictures, you can see the original posts after the tin was removed. As you can see, the posts leaned inward at an extreme angle. The second photo shows my tape measure hanging like a plumb bob from the new header I was preparing to install. The third photo shows the reason I couldn't remove the second post.

The fourth photo shows the wall with the 2 replaced posts along with the cross pieces that will hold the reinstalled tin. Note that I had to do some fairly unconventional "shimming" to build those cross pieces out enough to keep the finished wall as straight as possible. There will be some curvature to the tin but I wanted to minimize it as much as possible. Remember that on the original installation, the tin was horizontal. I've had to walk on it to straighten it out to reuse it.

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D-Dogg
Looks like you are giving it a lot of needed stability. Nice work!
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steve42
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The first picture shows that the original builder woke up and realized the tin should be installed vertically by the time the third wall was installed. The second shows the three pieces of tin I got cut and tacked in place before dark set in.

I'm going to try and find some tin off another old building if I can rather than buying new tin. I need 6 more 7' sections to finish the wall, and some of what I removed was savagely attacked to make the original horizontal installation.

By the way, I should point out I'm working about 300' from the nearest source of electricity, so some of the decisons we are making are out of a lack of desire to make another trip to the house to cut something. I'm a bit OCD, but I do have my limits!

To do list includes:

1. Getting enough tin to finish the job.
2. Replace the outermost cross piece that supports the roof tin. That piece took the brunt of the pressure when the old header collapsed and it had to hold up the rafters on its own.
2. Fabricating a rain gutter or flashing solution to attach to the new roof crossspiece to divert rainwater from the roof edge a bit more, as there isn't enough eave overhang to keep the rain out (that's why the old header failed).
3. Putting flashing over the tops of any wood that might be the target of standing water.
4. Figuring out a way to divert water off the wall section where the tree is too close (if necessary). I need to make sure rain doesn't run down the root and into the floor.
5. Pest control: I can deal with spiders and even roaches out there, but the ants, wasps, carpenter bees and Mr. Rat have to stay gone. Keeping the floor clean will help with that.
6. Tool and parts hangers and shelving.

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steve42
D-Dogg said:
Looks like you are giving it a lot of needed stability. Nice work!
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Thanks. I'm an architect at heart. Never could stomach the math, but I understand the need for reinforcement. I bought Tapcons and galvanized angles today. I need the neighbor's cordless hammerdrill to get those installed.

Another reason I opted to leave the rear post in place was that the dirt has eroded from under the slab a bit, and I was concerned that a 4X4 placed on that corner with the roof weight on it would break the corner of the slab and cause a collapse.

My original assessment of the structure was that it needed a coat of fire. Once I studied it and got it cleaned up, I saw the potential. They cared enough to do the one wall and the roof mostly right. They also put some cash into that slab. The left and rear walls were like afterthoughts, so that's where I'm concentrating my efforts.
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steve42
Rather than start a new thread, I'm simply going to revive this one. This project went on hiatus back in 2010 because no one in our area was stocking the corrugated style metal panels we needed to finish the project. I noticed when we were buying materials for our other storage building that Home Depot has the metal in stock, so I bought four 2' X 8' few panels and we resumed work on it today.

My wife and our sons got to work cutting back the little scrub bushes and vines that had grown up near the building.

The first thing that I did was finish knocking the rear wall out of the shed. As you can see above, the previous owners decided for some reason to install the panels horizontally on this wall, and they built the framing for that wall out of salvage lumber which didn't last nearly long enough. I was able to keep the panels mostly straight and we pulled the nails out of them.

I had to construct a board for the lower horizontal support because it needed to be 12' 2" long and we have no way of getting a 14' or 16' 2 x 4 home. Once I got that support across between the beams, I measured to install vertical panels for that wall. I was able to reuse three of the pieces that had been installed horizontally (the forth was on the ground and was rusted badly. I will need to purchase three 2' X 10' panels to finish the high side of the shed because nothing we had was long enough.

After I ran out of back panels, I set to work on the side wall again. I installed the first new sheet and then it was getting dark and time to grill burgers for the wife and kids. If the rain holds off tomorrow, I'll install the other three 2' x 8' panels on the side wall.

I'll also try to take some progress photos of this project.

Steve
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steve42
6
Well, we are finally finished with this old project.

I've taken to calling it the mini-pole barn. This one is about 250 feet from the house, but we have a clear line of sight to it from French doors in the dining room, so it was important that it be presentable.

We wound up buying 8 pieces of 2X8 corrugated to make the repairs, so it cost about 80 dollars to redo the metal, plus the two pieces of Pressure Treated lumber to replace the posts (though I think they were left over from another project).

I got the new sheets hung on the back (visible in pictures 1-3 & 5) yesterday before my wife and kids got home. She came back and helped me put the new sheets on the right side (picture 4) plus the pieces to cover the gap in the high angle on the back wall where the sheets didn't reach (pictures 1-3).

Some of the sheets on the left side (which we didn't have to replace) stopped 8 to 12 inches shy of the slab, so we popped the nails from the bottom board and slipped pieces in to fill the gaps there (picture 4).

I need to get out there with a chainsaw and remove the undesirable little trees, but I have to finish working on the chainsaw to get it running again.

The wife is happy with the outcome. The only thing I'm not just mad about is the way we had to cover some gaps in the rear left corner. There's not a lot of wood to nail to back there and I didn't have a good way to add one because that post is at such an extreme angle, so we had to just wrap some old pieces around the corner and tack them as best we could (picture 5).

Picture 6 is a shot of the John Deeres in my sig block. The 116 and 116H are in the front, waiting for a friend who is supposed to be picking them up later this month. The 38" deck on the back wall will go with them. The 180, which once again needs some TLC, is in the very back corner and the 46" deck goes back under it once it's been re-done.

I'm glad to have this one done... 2 years later!:fing20:

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B
hmm you right Steve, I would have thought you would have garnered more responses. (I never saw it in 'Active today' ) anyway, it looks like the tractors can keep a bit cozier in there,...well done!
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steve42
Thanks, B.E.:fing32:
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tiretrx
Looking good, Steve. I got several, by my count, my wife has a different number, unfinished projects that are at least 2 years in the making :banghead3 You wound up with some fine storage, and you can scratch one off the list :fing32: Thanks for the update!
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steve42
tiretrx said:
You wound up with some fine storage, and you can scratch one off the list :fing32:
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Thanks, tiretrx. Now, if I can get the chainsaw project completed successfully, I'll be able to trim away some more of those small trees to keep it more accessible (and less desirable to the critters that seem to like to hang around in the brushy sections).

Steve
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