Community Woodshed Raising

We had a group of guys over for a workday this past weekend to help me get a woodshed up. They're all volunteers, and the only thing they got paid was some bratwurst. Each one of these guys is rock-solid, and they're the kind of guys that make you feel honored to watch your son grow up around. But on to the nuts and bolts...err rafters and nails of the shed.

The shed is a lean to built onto the side of our shop. It is made almost entirely of recycled materials - the only thing not recycled were one 2x6 rafter and the nails in the nail gun. It's 24 ft long and 10 ft wide. Total cost, including lunch was around 120 bucks.

One of our friends is a professional carpenter/generally awesome stud. His oversight made for a high quality job.For supports, we used cut up telephone poles that I salvaged from some construction work at my job. The poles were extremely heavy. They're also creosoted pretty well -the poles were first put up in 1981, but have stood the test of time. The creosote is pretty critical, b/c as you'll see below some of the poles went into wet ground, it took a good bit of manhandling to get them into place.

Some spots were wetter than others, and into the wettest spots, the most heavily creosoted poles were placed and concreted in place. 2x8 nailers were put up onto the shop wall and the rafters hung from them (sans roofing). Once the rafters were up, the fascia went up and the rafters were attatched. The pic below is kind of confusing. The fascia and the rafter are around 1/16 in too short, so we're pulling the fascia into the rafter.

My boy Simmey (left) and one of our neighbors boys, spent the day chasing ducks, catching chickens, teasing turkeys - generally just terrorizing poultry. There were a lot of boys running around having a great time- a great sight.

The finished product. I put the sheeting on on Sunday in about 2 hours. The sheeting, like the lumber was salvage from a chickenhouse teardown. Good thing I got it up when I did, as it snowed the next day.