Shed

Friday night I started by digging up the ground where the shed was going to go, to level it out. I wasn't sure how well that would work, as I'd never done it, but it worked quite well. Only took a couple of hours and most of that was fighting with breaking strong sod over an infinite quantity of rocks. I pulled up sod and a bit of soil from the high corner, and piled it up on the low corner, then raked it out to relatively level.

Saturday I put together the foundation kit and laid out the plywood. There was one problem there. For some reason, when buying the shed kit, I asked the guy at Home Depot how much plywood I needed, and then, I listened to the answer. What was I thinking? Whatever mind-altering effect was clouding me was also affecting the Home Depot employee, though; instead of selling me too much, he sold me too little. So I had to fill out the middle with two layers of some much-thinner plywood. I might cut another couple of pieces and add them later.

Then I had to stop for a while to stack a cord of green wood that was supposed to arrive on Friday, but no Vermonter in business for himself ever comes on the day he's supposed to, not on the first try.

The actual assembly started on Saturday but I soon reached a step that said, after this, I shouldn't continue unless I could finish it that day, since a partially-completed shed was vulnerable to severe wind damage. So we rounded out the afternoon spray-painting the pieces. Ran out of paint, though, and had to run out for more, but it was dark by time we got back, so I finished the next morning.

Saturday's work also included the obligatory blood sacrifice -- one of the pieces took a hunk out of my thumb that bled surprisingly profusely for a while, soaked several bandages, but then it finally stopped.

Most of Sunday was spent finishing the assembly, and a lot of that was done with Tyler's help, which was very valuable and greatly appreciated. The already-painted pieces went up pretty easily, though the paint job is splotchier than I realized it would be. We weren't painting it for looks, but for rust resistance (which is why the roof and trim are in a lighter shade of blue instead of darker: that was the Rustoleum paint). But we have some paint left to touch it up. It also turns out to be missing one handle; I'll have to call for that missing part tomorrow, they're closed today.

I still have to anchor it to the plywood, and build a soil ramp up to the entrance (but it doesn't have to be very fancy; this shed is just secondary storage, the big stuff like the tractor will all live in the garage). And do some paint touch-up, and put on the handle when I get it. And finally, decide what to move into it. There's only a few things in there now.