Toyman builds a new boat shed.

Some of you might remember that hurricane Matthew smashed my boat shed last year along with a couple of boats. Yes, there are 3 boats and an entire pole barn under this tree.

I took vacation this week to rebuild it. One end, with a store room, was still standing, and the plan was to remove all the damaged parts and rebuild it. It would have required setting 3 poles, building a hand full of trusses and throwing some tin on it. Once we got to studying it closer, what was left was in very poor shape. Half of the remaining poles were rotting at the ground and most of the roof would have required rebuilding. So, the decision was made to abandon the old and build a new one.

20' X 40' was the decided size. That will give me 2 bays to store my boats, one bay to turn into a store room, and an additional bay for my father to store some tractor implements. This is going to be a very basic pole shed with a gabled tin roof.

Yesterday we picked out a place and laid out the building. Since we are starting from scratch, we decided to move it about 300' to another location. Today we set the poles. We tried to use my uncles tractor driven auger to dig the holes, but it was missing several parts so we abandoned that idea and dug all the holes by hand. 10, 12' 6 x 6 treated posts were set in 5 hours. You can just see what is left of the original shed in the background of this image.

More to come tomorrow.

This is relevant to my interest. I actually have been planning something like this for this fall.

Would you mind keeping a running tally for the project? Price estimation has always been difficult for me.

In reply to Dusterbd13:

10, 6" X 6" X 12' posts and a box of 4" screws set me back $340. If you can take the time to shop it, you can probably get it cheaper. I bought the posts locally. HD was cheaper, but they were also a two hour round trip.

Most of the rest of the material for building the trusses and the band boards, I already have from cleaning up construction sites for a contractor I know. My cost on that is zero. I will post up the quantity of the materials. The roofing I'll have to buy and I'll share that when I get it ordered.

Cool. Thanks!

M8ne will probably be somewhat smaller (dunno. Haven't measured the space or checked town rulws), but yours is my ideal size for keeping cars and wheelbarrow and mower and....

You know you're building it within tree-striking range again, right?

Also I love how green/lush it is there - here in New Mexico, worst case would be a large cactus falling on something

Following with interest! I want to build something similar soon that will house Hay, Boats, Tractors, implements, Cars, or some combination of those things.

looks like a nice project. I'd love to have an outdoor cooking shed built like this, so I'm interested to see how you build the trusses.

So...how bad did it hurt the boats? Looks pretty rough.

Please tell us no jet boats were harmed in the making of that mess

My 20' Sea Ray was crushed. It wasn't in very good shape to start with, so no great loss. A friend's 15' tri-hull lost the windshield. My 17' Key West survived without any damage. It was in a section of the shed that had broken trusses, but they didn't fall on the boat. The Jet Boat was at my house so it wasn't in any danger.

We didn't work very hard today. All that was accomplished was installing the top plate. It consists of 2 X 6 boards installed on both sides of the poles. They are screwed in place with 4", #10 screws and through bolted with 3/4 X 12 galvanized bolts.

Since setting poles perfectly level is impossible, we used a builders level to shoot lines on all the poles. That let us locate the shortest pole and then set the top plate level, at that point. We will cut the tops off the longer poles if necessary when we set the trusses.

The tie boards on either end aren't really necessary, but they will make the structure a little sturdier if things get windy.

Add 15, 2 X 6 X 16 to your materials list, as well as a box of 250, 4" screws and 10, 3/4 X 12 bolts with washers and nuts.

Tomorrow morning we will be going to town to pick up 44, 12' sheets of 5 V crimp, galvanized roofing and the roofing screws. As soon as we get back, it will be truss construction time. We will be building 11 of them.

More to come.

In reply to Brokeback:

Yes, it is within tree strike range, but it is outside of the 200+ year old pecan orchard this time. Pecan trees are fragile at best and when you add the age, they are breaking up on a regular basis. We lost three of them during Matthew, one of which landed on the shed.

The only large trees by the shed now are a youngish live oak, and a middle aged hickory. It should be safe for my life time. Then my grand-kids can rebuild it.

Today's progress consisted of a run to town to pick up the tin for the roof. The stuff Lowe's sells is like tinfoil so we went to a roofing supplier and bought commercial tin. They didn't have enough 12' tin so we ended up buying 14' tin to make up the difference. 44 sheets of tin, 5, 10' pieces of ridge cap, and 1000 screws was about $1900. We've been fighting rain off and on all day so the tin is in the garage. FYI, tin that sits stacked and gets wet between the layers, will discolor fairly quickly from galvanic corrosion, so keep your tin dry if possible.

Next up was a trip to the lumber yard for 6 sheets of 1/2" plywood, 4000, 3.25" ring shank, nail gun nails, 10 tubes of liquid nails, 50 hurricane clips, and 3 boxes of 4D X 1.5" galvanized nails for the clips. The plywood will be used as gussets for the trusses. That trip set me back about $400. We won't need all 4000 gun nails, but they are good to have on hand.

Then it was on to cutting all the lumber for the trusses. We burned through quite a stack of 2" X 4" boards. My lumber stack is under the collapsed end of the original shed.

These are some of the gusset plates.

This is one of the trusses that survived from the old shed. We are using it as a pattern.

Lots of lumber cut and ready for assembly. It's kind of a mess at the moment. Tomorrow morning it will get straightened up and building the trusses will commence.

More to come.

Brokeback wrote: Also I love how green/lush it is there - here in New Mexico, worst case would be a large cactus falling on something

That's sorta funny 'cause the dude I've been working for is from L.A. and has land in what looks like a Desert to me(strawberry Farms) He Say's "Why Does it Rain so much Here" (N.Georgia) I say LOOK at How GREEN it Is Here.

The view with my coffee this morning. I'll be staying in the south, with the rain and trees and heat and humidity. The desert is a beautiful place, but I love trees and green grass.

I thought digging the holes to set the posts was going to be the hard part of this job.

I was wrong. Building trusses is much harder. The temps topped out at 95, that didn't help.

Here's how things went. I used the original truss as a jig by nailing some blocking and guides to it. We would set all the loose lumber on the jig and it kept everything aligned while we nailed the gussets on. That made sure all the trusses were identical.

Many nails and many tubes of construction adhesive later...

Tomorrow we may set them. We may take the day off as well. It's been a long and hard week so far. I'm beat.

I'm curious if you priced pre-made trusses and if you did, what the price difference was.

In reply to EvanR:

I did not price prebuilt, because all the material I used to build these was free.

In reply to Toyman01:

I'm quite certain that the prebuilt ones would have cost significantly more than $FREE.

The weather has not been conducive to getting this project done. It looks like it will be next weekend before I can get the trusses set and the tin on.

I spent the weekend moving this project forward.

Saturday morning early, the crew got together and we set all the trusses. We have a gin pole that mounts to the backhoe bucket, so getting them up in the air was a breeze. 11 trusses were set, plumbed and braced off in just under 2 hours.

Several of my nieces and nephews came out to help, as well as my brother. We not only managed to get the trusses set in two hours, but all of the hurricane clips were installed as well. We had two air guns and 5 hammers running at one point. You can put a lot of steel in wood at that rate.

While one crew finished setting the trusses, the next crew started running purlins. These horizontal boards are what the tin will fasten to.

By lunch we had made a pretty good progress.

After lunch we continued to nail down all the purlins. They took forever and we finally finished at about 4 pm.

My brother and his boys came to help. I'll be helping him build a similar shed at his house next spring.

Purlins done, finally.

Sunday, we took the morning off and went to church. We got started back on the roof at noon. It was time to lay tin.

With tin roofing, if you screw up the first sheet, it will all be screwed up. So we took our time and laid the first two sheets out very carefully.

Once we got it set and a string pulled along the bottom edge, it was time to rock on.

By 4:30, we were done and the tools were picked up.

There is still a ridge cap to install, as well as some work on either end to finish off the gables, but this building is 90% done. At some point in the future, I'll pour a slab under it, but not this year.

I'm planning on finishing the roof next weekend.

Add 65, 16', 2" X 4" boards to your list. The purlins can be made with 1" X 4" as well, but I had plenty of free 2" X 4"s so I used them. I also bought 10, 2" X 4" X 16' treated boards to use at the edged of the tin.

It was a good weekend.

More to come.

What a beautiful palatial estate you have. Yeah the temps/humidity here in SE Texas make for some brutal outdoor activity, especially between 1&4 pm. Your view off the veranda, is that Goose Creek?

In reply to 759NRNG:

The shed and the view are on Edisto Island, just south of Charleston SC. My family has been farming out there since the 1700s. It is my favorite place on earth. I'll be moving out there as soon as my youngest gets out of high school, in about 4 years.

The heat was pretty painful Saturday. 95 degrees, no breeze, and lots of humidity, makes for a muggy day. We went swimming off the dock when we were done for the day, and even the creek water was warm. I'm ready for fall, and we still have to get through the rest of July and all of August.

Farming???.........crops or critters? Been to Charleston onced...loved it, need to go back, many more places to see.

In reply to 759NRNG:

Both for the longest time. My grandfather and uncle raised cattle up until two years ago, as well as truck crops. Now most of the property is planted in rye, corn, or rice by a local farmer. The rye was just harvested and shipped to New Jersey to make whisky. When the distillery is done with it, it gets shipped back and ground for bread. The corn is made into Jimmy Red grits. This is their first year for rice, kind of a trial run. He sells primarily to restaurants and local farmers markets, or sells in his own roadside market. http://geechieboymill.com/

I'm in your neck of the woods on Folly Beach for vacation with the inlaws this week. I can see the allure. I'd need a bigger shed for boats, too, if I lived here (and I have more than a few boats at my place in Missouri )