House

Storage shed

admin — Sat, 18 Nov 2023 15:44:50 +0000

Storage shed

As someone with too many hobbies and tools and projects, it's no surprise that space is my main limiting factor around the house and shop. It's probably for the best that space limitations help to moderate my project acquisition. Still, the garage is hitting maximum density, and I'd love to have a place to keep some of the things that I don't need to keep handy, like the extra set of car tires, and seasonal things like the mower and lawn furniture.

Enter the storage shed project.

I researched shed options, and pretty quickly decided to design my own. I didn't want to get a plastic shed, the metal sheds seem a bit fragile and damage-prone, and the wooden shed options were all about double what I was hoping to spend. I also wanted something around 8'x6', which is an odd size, but seemed like a good fit in the space with more than enough room for what we knew we wanted to store.

The design was done by mid-summer but I procrastinated ordering materials until September, then with lead time and foul early fall weather didn't get started building until mid October.

The shed is located between the garage and a large pine tree, a corner of the yard where I've been piling trimmed branches and keeping the compost pile, and it's been a mess anyway. This is a much better use of the space.

The foundation is gravel over leveled dirt, then 4x4 treated skids and 2x6 joists. Probably overkill. We hit a nice patch of weather and got from level foundation to fully framed in, with roof sheathing, over a weekend. I started Friday afternoon and got the base built and a start on the back panel, then continued early Saturday morning.

I used a lean-to style roof to maximize ceiling height with the small footprint and simplify the roof, though it's far easier to find design references online for standard peaked roofs than for a lean-to.

Framing is standard 2x4, though I included a diagonal brace on each of the side and back walls. Again, probably overkill, but I hadn't used these siding panels before and wanted some backup to them for racking strength.

The diagonals are mortised into the framing, and despite the extra work it does really help keep these frame panels together when setting them into place. I'm working by myself for pretty much the whole project, so it's helpful to not need 3 hands for everything. It's cool when the parts you're making all start to fit together like they did on the plan drawing.

An example of making my own third hand here, setting up a backing board to keep the roof sheathing from sliding right off so I can position and nail it in place. I'm planning to use a metal roof, but those pieces are coming in separately so I wanted something that would be weather tight in case I couldn't get the metal installed before spring. These panels are supposed to be good for 6 months of exposure in the rain, so should be more than good enough.

As much as possible I tried to design for few cuts in the large panels, so these are 2 sheets of 4x8 that go on as-is.

I ended that Saturday with a fully framed-in shed, plus installed roof panels. The reinforcing boards added some time, but so did the side walls, with the roof angles to cut. My only tool splurge for the project was a power miter saw, and it was incredibly useful, a real time-saver. On the other hand, I did not use a power nailer. I hit all 7 pounds of nails with my own hammer.

A look at the confluence of joint angles at the top right corner, before it gets covered up in sheathing.

The progress on day 2 (Sunday) doesn't seem nearly as dramatic, but it involved a lot of fiddly cuts and I seem to remember a couple of trips to the store for things. I think I ran out of nails at one point. Anyway, Sunday evening, and it's a weather-tight building except for the door opening, which felt really good.

Monday afternoon I built the door from the cutout pieces of siding, plus an inner layer from the OSB panel that was used as packaging for the siding panels. I was pleased when the vertical lines in the door panel aligned with the rest of the shed front. I was aiming for that, but that kind of thing never seems to work out so nicely.

An overview of the shed in place.

At this point we hit several days of bad weather, with snow flurries and a bit of rain, so I was happy that it was an enclosed usable space. Even if it wasn't done, I could store things like the saw and wood and the ladder. It was already paying off!

The roof panels kept getting pushed out, and ended up arriving 2 weeks late, and at that point it was solidly around freezing for the daily highs. I had resigned myself to installing the roof in the spring, but after tiptoeing around the panels in the garage for a few days and realizing what a hassle it was going to be to store them over winter I decided to just add the roof.

There are no photos of the roofing work. One, the main panels went up really fast after the first one was aligned. The roof only needed 3 panels, and it's really just screwing a fancy metal sheet to a piece of wood.

Oh, except it really needed like 2.75 panels, so I had to trim one of them short. I was really at a loss for how best to cut about 16" off of a long side until I remember these funky metal shears I got at an estate sale last year.

They were actually the perfect tool for the job. These are designed to cut a strip between two side anvils, so you can make long cuts in sheet metal without distorting the edge like you'd have to with aviation shears. There are electric versions of these available, but I'm glad I didn't have to buy them for just one cut.

Oh, and the roof is blue. I don't hold up my roof trim work as an example, you'd be better off asking the lumber yard about it. Mine turned out fine, but not amazing.

Happy to have the roof installed, I was still resigned to painting the shed in the spring when we got a surprise few days of highs around 60°F, so we got some paint and I got it done over a couple of days.

The black panel is solar, to charge the interior lights. I didn't want to mess with connecting the shed to garage power, because it's just for storage, but also wanted to see what's in there since I didn't want to add windows. A couple of LED strips, a 12v battery, and cheap charge controller all work together to (hopefully) have light inside whenever we need it. In testing I could get at least 2 hours of use in relatively cold weather and still see some charge on the battery indicator. The panel doesn't get full sun, but it also gets so little use that it should be fine.

I'm really happy to have this done before winter. It's mostly tires and scrap wood inside, but what a difference in the garage space, and I'm sure I'll reconfigure it next year as we have more time and find more uses for that space.

admin Sat, 11/18/2023 - 09:44

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Snowshoe repair

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 20:32:38 +0000

Snowshoe repair

Today’s project is building new bindings for my ~20 year old Atlas snowshoes. They haven’t seen much use for a few years now, and when I got them out for an upcoming weekend trip I realized the main binding part was broken in several places. Apparently the plastic used to make the main binding piece wasn’t meant to last this long.

There were a few places where the binding had failed completely and several areas with cracks that wouldn't hold under any kind of force. Unfortunately, Atlas also doesn’t sell replacement parts, and it's not worth mailing them across the country for repair, so it was either toss the shoes or make something new.

Working with just the left side, so i could use the right as a reference, i drilled out the rivets holding the binding and webbing together. They're just soft aluminum, and easy to drill out.

With the pieces apart, i could lay out the main binding part and map out how to rebuild it with something else. Here are the main parts laid out as best i could. Everything seemed to be in perfectly good shape other than the main plastic piece of the bindings.

I have some Dunlop strap left over from rebuilding my car seats a couple of years ago, and figured it would make a good replacement since it's just rubber-coated webbing, both pliable in the cold and reinforced for strength.

I had to buy a larger rivet setter and large (3/8” and 1/4”) rivets, but I spent maybe $15 total on parts and the riveter was only $20 at Harbor Freight. I laid out the straps to replace the attachment points and trimmed them to fit the hardware, then did some test fitting. I punched the holes with the largest setting on my leather punch.

The bindings wrap back and forth in a pattern that only makes sense when you have another one for reference. The other shoe is a mirror image, which slowed me down some, but in the end I got it laid out and riveted together.

This shows the left shoe done and the right one not yet started. The pieces aren't a 1:1 match, but as close as i could get with this webbing and minimizing the number of pieces and rivets.

They seems to be working well, the bindings still fit my boot and flex just like the originals since i'm using the same attachment points and hinge. At the rate i use them, this should last a good few years.

admin Mon, 02/15/2021 - 14:32

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Picnic table rebuild

admin — Sat, 08 Aug 2020 18:22:55 +0000

Picnic table rebuild

We have this old picnic table that was a hand-me-down from one of my neighbors. They gave it to me several years ago, and it was pretty far from new then.

It's a good style of table for us, as we rarely have more than 4 people eating together in the yard, and it's pretty compact in our small yard. We added an umbrella from Ikea, and stained the wood 7-8 years ago, but otherwise have done no maintenance.

The wood was getting pretty dry, but they're solid and still fairly straight boards.

I figured i could make it look nicer and eliminate some splintery areas with some planing. I'm not getting much exercise otherwise, so i planed it all by hand.

It cleaned up surprisingly well, considering how grey and dry the boards seemed on top. I used this old Bailey No.5 plane for the main cleanup and flattening, and a Record No.4 smoothing plane for the final surface.

I don't have really have a lot of fancy tools, but it was fun to break out that Record, because i got it along with some of my uncle's woodworking tools, and it was still in the original box, unused. This was its first use ever (it's not a collectible model). It did a great job, and i made quite a pile of shavings by the time i was done, even just smoothing the top and sides.

That done, i went back to check out the frame.

It doesn't look terrible here, but notice the tubes along the ground on the front left. The frame was made of square tubes, but some of the horizontal tubes along the ground were round, a result of water getting in and freezing in our Minnesota winters. So the whole thing came apart.

Now that i have a MIG welder, i thought it would be good practice to patch in new tube where needed and fix the rust in there. Here you can see the rust damage and one of the fixed legs. I ended up replacing tube sections on 3 pieces and patches on a 4th one. Two of the legs had sections split open by freeze expansion.

My portable work table was a handy place to work, because i could adjust the table to be parallel with the width set to the overall height of the piece (16"), making it really quick to trim and test the joint fit.

On all of the tubes the rust extended into the curve of the leg, past the straight section, so i had to patch in smaller pieces of sheet steel.

I got 16ga 1.5" tubing, slightly thicker than the original tubes. It was good practice to work on this, as i build confidence toward fixing the floorboards on the TR6 project. My welds near the end needed a lot less cleanup than the earlier welds.

Welding cleanup was fairly minimal, just smoothing over the joints without taking away material from the thin tubes. The insides got some rust converter and the outsides painted with 3 coats of Rustoleum white.

I got some vinyl wall protector and attached it to the legs with carpet tape to keep the new paint from getting gouged up on the stones the table usually sits on.

The boards got 2 coats of thinned down boiled linseed oil and looked so good i decided not to use a stain on top, but will add a clear water seal coat once that has a chance to fully dry.

I don't have a closeup picture of them, but the vertical inner frame tubes (where the side pieces bolt on) have new plastic caps to help keep water out - i 3d printed those to fit from this excellent little design: Cap that Hole by Zivbot. It's worth the download for OpenSCAD, you can customize all kinds of shape and size dimensions with it, and make caps for all kinds of tubes.

admin Sat, 08/08/2020 - 13:22

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Kitchen remodel, done

admin — Thu, 08 Aug 2019 15:38:20 +0000

Kitchen remodel, done

I finally finished the multi-phase kitchen update started in earnest 5 years ago. Way back in phase 1, the plan was to remove the former back door and make it a permanent wall, and I even planned to do that the next year. Well, it's done now anyway.

This is where we left off with the refrigerator area of the kitchen:

Functionally complete, with the pantry passthrough to the back yard, and the original back door blocked by the fridge. It worked, but it wasn't really right.

It was time to take out that door and replace it with a wall.

First task after removing the door and trim: fix the floor boards rotted decades ago by the leaking ice box.

Happily, I had a supply of correctly-sized maple flooring after replacing the partially rotting bathroom floor a few years ago. Always save wooden bits when you work on an old house. You never know when they'll be useful.

Speaking of old wooden bits, this is the back of one of the door jamb trim boards:

#728 John Thullin(?). Not sure about the last name, but he had nice handwriting and apparently something to do with the building of our house in 1909.

The wall took some planning, because I wanted to retain the jamb for some storage on the entryway side. I ended up with a layer of 1/2" plywood and drywall, supported by a 2x4 in the middle of the doorway. The natural unflatness of the plaster worked in my favor though, and I ended up with a plausibly flat wall in the end.

Shout out to Wally's Plaster Magic for filling in the bigger areas, that stuff is really good. A skim coat of joint compound smoothed out the transitions and filled small holes.

Happily, the kitchen paint was still good, and I had saved all of the trim from the last project to build cabinets, so I had some nice long pieces to use here. I'm happy the way it turned out.

You can't see it in this pic, but the molding pieces go all the way into the corner, like it was always built this way. Everything got scraped and cleaned up then re-shellacked to match the rest of the refinished trim. That board with the signature? It's now the chair rail, ripped to size and refinished.

On to the back hall. I knew I wanted to fill the doorway with shelves, because we always need more storage, and it made sense to leave it framed in with that nice trim. Hence, it's a door of shelves.

You can see the plywood and brace here, I didn't want shelf use to crack the newly refinished wall on the other side. Hopefully that's enough.

The side cleats are screwed into place and the shelves are a slip fit in between, so it should be easy to reconfigure if we need to later.

This is the completed view of the shelves from the pantry. The shelves are the same color as the walls (hooray for paint staying useful for 3 years), and the trim shellacked to match the neighboring boards. I just used clear on the plywood back to keep it a lighter color. It's not shown here, but the lower trim all matches the kitchen side, with new pieces quarter round added after this photo. Everything around the floor was also caulked and top finished in polyurethane because it's a winter entry too.

This was a satisfying project because it was minimally disruptive (compared to the other work), and the end result looks like it belongs because it's a lot of the same pieces, just re-arranged.

admin Thu, 08/08/2019 - 10:38

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Kitchen cabinets: remodel phase 2

admin — Sat, 17 Feb 2018 03:24:39 +0000

Kitchen cabinets: remodel phase 2

When i bought my house, the worst part of the kitchen was a near-total lack of cabinets. I mean, besides the 4 doors to the kitchen and the lack of home for the refrigerator. But aside from that, cabinets.

Built in 1909, the house likely had free-standing cabinets for most of its life. By the time I bought it the only cabinets aside from the pantry were on the wall around and above the sink.

This is how much storage and counter space we had around the stove:

The narrow shelf in the left nook was part of a shelf unit I built many apartments ago, and it just happened to fit here. The small table on the right i built for a different apartment with the same lack of countertop problem. It was a pretty lousy solution for the house, but all i had for several years here.

I wanted more cabinet space, but nothing pre-built seemed to fit. The nook at the left was a complication, and the lower right space also had a heat vent on the baseboard, and the left side of the stove had the gas line coming up through the floor. I figured I could more easily design and build my own cabinets.

First, I contracted some electrical work to have new outlets installed for the microwave and counter spaces, and wiring for undercabinet lighting. Here i'm test fitting the upper cabinets to test the locations for the new outlets & light wiring. I also ran speaker wire for the cabinet tops, to tie in to the house system. We like to listen to music while cooking.

I built all of the cases using basic pocket screw carcasses, with maple-faced plywood and a clear poly finish. The drawers are the same plywood but with box joints. The undercabinet lighting is pretty nice to have.

The right lower cabinet is a bit shorter for a cooking prep surface, easier to work on. It also has a sliding garbage/recycling center and the main silverware drawer. The left side has a drawer and 2 sliding shelves for pots and pans. The right cabinet also has a tunnel to re-route the heat vent out through the kick plate, and insulated so we aren't just making the garbage hot all winter.

This is the space with finished cabinets, pre-counter, but with the finished doors and drawers in place:

The counter top is 2" maple butcher block, found at Bauer Brothers salvage in Mpls, and plenty big enough to fit into the space. The left side needed a little extra fiddly cutting to fit in the odd space.

The last pieces were the spice rack on the right side, and this cover for the kickplate heat vent outlet. I couldn't find what i wanted, so i cut this out of 1/8" aluminum plate, with more hand cutting and filing than i want to admit. It's also practically impossible to see it now that it's installed.

Overall, this was easily the best and most practical remodeling project i've done on the house.

admin Fri, 02/16/2018 - 21:24

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Woodwork

Kitchen remodel, Phase 1

admin — Sun, 14 Sep 2014 23:24:09 +0000

Kitchen remodel, Phase 1

My house was built in 1909, and i'm absolutely sure that from about 1909 to 1930 or so it was a perfectly delightful and usable kitchen. After that it went downhill because here's the thing: it was never designed with a place to put a refrigerator.

This is a common problem with houses of that era and earlier. They had an ice box in the back hallway that stored perishables and a pantry for the dry goods, and the whole kitchen could be dedicated to utensil storage and work space. (Probably with standalone cabinetry, but that's a story for phase 2).

This is the starting point for the space:

This is looking toward the back of the house, standing in the doorway from the front. From here you can see the other 3 doors that lead into the kitchen that help chop up any wall long enough to make into a counter. Or store a fridge, which here is partially blocking the swinging door at the left. This sucked.

The middle door in this pic (with the window) is the pantry, and the right door is the exit to the back yard. They were separated by a wall, but HERE'S THE THING: what if that wasn't a wall? The right side door could be a wall and we could exit through the pantry instead.

So that's what i did.

The back hallway had its own challenges, as the years of icebox use there had rotted the maple floor underneath, starting into the top of the floor joists. I sistered and reinforced the joists and installed a new subfloor, then tiled the entryway.

Since i was losing some shelf storage space in the pantry, i built a cabinet for the space where the fridge was.

This was the first time i'd done this scale of cabinet work, and it was challenging to make a built-in piece to fit walls that weren't necessarily smooth or square with each other or the floor. I opted for a sort of Hoosier cabinet variant with lower storage, drawers, and upper cabinets. It's only about 14" deep, but plenty enough for our daily dishes, and a relocated outlet lets us use the toaster there too. The original plan was to build glass-front doors for the upper shelves, but I like it better as open shelves.

This is the current view of that wall, with new fridge. The plan is still to remove that door behind the fridge to replace it with wall, maybe this year.

admin Sun, 09/14/2014 - 18:24

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