I have been living in my current home for the last 12 or so years. Tucked away at the end of the garden was an abandoned shed. My landlord (Alex) who lives abroad had a great deal of his things stored inside. As we never had the keys for this shed, we never paid much attention to it.
Recently, Alex was in the country and dropped by to collect a couple of his things. Unfortunately, without our knowledge, the roof had gone in many years ago it would seem. About 10% of the roof remained intact and most of the contents has been ruined.
We reached an agreement where I could use the shed provided I made repairs to it and store whatever was still in good shape.
This suits me because my workspace has expanded over the years to the point where some extra space would be most welcome. It may seem crazy of me to invest my own money in someone else's property, but I will save money by not paying for off site storage anymore. My return on investment is about 8 months.
So, lets get set to work.
Quite a mess, it'll only get worse though. Alex put polythene on the roof perhaps in some sort of panic.
Inside is pretty bad and even with no roof, it stinks of rot.
Upon removing the contents I found one of the walls had split from top to bottom. I pretty much pulled the whole wall down and built it up again from the ground. I put steel reinforcing band between each course.
Now it's time to get a new roof on. The entire roof had to be removed as the joists, although in not too bad a shape, were under spec'd. The joists really need to be 50x100mm treated timbers with 600mm centres. I also went for 18mm ply, expensive, but necessary in my opinion.
The old timbers are removed and the floor cleared. I had some much appreciated help from my brother and my friend Chris.
Now we have to get rid of loads of plants that have grown through the roof over the years.
Finally, the timber delivery arrived at 3pm. I had to get the roof on the same day because rain was forecast for the Sunday.
Roof timbers going up fast.
Now the ply goes on top. As a side note, if you ever have a project that involved driving a lot of screws, do yourself a favour and get self drilling Torx head screws. They save a great deal of time. No cam-out at all. My local store stocks a wide variety of the Paslode ones. They are more expensive, but well worth it. A great deal cheaper then buying a Paslode nailer
Note that the correct tongue angle when performing this task is vital
Now the boards are screwed down, the surface needs to be swept and prepared for the one piece EPDM rubber roof.
The rubber is laid out and here I am applying the glue.
Just before dark, the roof is complete.
The next day I put up the roof trims and guttering.
So now, it's time to get the inside done.
I applied a liquid DPM (damp proof membrane) but I didn't get on with it much so I put polythene down on top of it. I then put stud work on the walls and floor to hold the insulation in place.
The insulation arrived on time. I went for high performance Celotex PIR insulation boards. 50mm for floor and walls and 75mm for the roof. This stuff is manufactured locally, some of the boards were produced just days before by the date code on them.
It's pretty easy to cut and install.
I used odd planks of wood from the ruined flat packed furniture to make the floor. I just trimmed the rotten ends off of the pine sheets to make a good solid floor.
The floor is mostly complete, just the odd shapes to be cut and screwed in place.
That's my progress so far. The next thing is to put a decent door up.
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