God, what an ordeal it was to put this shed up.
In between the time I built the form, and the day the concrete was poured, the form got knocked out of square somehow. Sooooo… When the cement hardened I had a concrete parallelogram instead of a 9′ x 10′ rectangle. It became quite a trick centering the channels for the shed.
Remember how we all sat in high school geometry class and thought “I’ll never use any of this crap.” Well, I actually used some of that high school geometry! (Pythagorean theorem) There is meaning in the universe after all! 😀
Then I had all kinds of trouble drilling into the concrete to mount the steel channels that the shed mounts to. I was sorely tempted to rent a jackhammer and start all over… but I resisted the temptation.
Concrete is non-uniform in consistency, so the drill bit kept wandering as it pierced the top layer and ran into subsurface gravel. I was winding up with some finished holes almost ¼” away from where I had started them. Of course, with all the dust, I didn’t know until too late that the holes were off. I eventually figured out how to use the steel channels as guides for the drilling. Meanwhile, the concrete pad was beginning to take on the appearance of Swiss cheese.
OK, I’m exaggerating.
I got a new tool out of the whole adventure (which is why guys do projects to begin with – to justify tool purchases to their wives). I now have a new Bosch hammer drill! Wotta beauty!
Which reminds me – if you’ve got masonry drilling to do, don’t buy single bits, just get it over with and go ahead and buy the 12-pak, because otherwise you’ll be cursing all the way back to Home Depot after you shatter your first and only bit. Of the five bits I ruined, I actually got one of them so hot that the steel mushroomed.
Masonry screws didn’t work – many sheared right off as they ran into harder stones inside the cement, so after a little research into the holding power of various fasteners, I would up with plastic mollys and sheet metal screws. Much to my surprise, the plastic anchors offer better holding power than lead anchors (size being equal).
I used liquid nails under the channels, screwed them down to 75 pounds of torque, caulked them with silicone cement caulk (Earthquakes? Cyclones? This puppy ain’t going anywhere, dammit!), and I painted the whole pad with epoxy cement paint. At which point Camille said, “You like to overbuild, don’t you?”
Ummm, what was your first clue?
It would have been nice to invite three or four friends over for the final construction, in the manner of an Amish barn raising, but with all the obstacles, I simply could not count on a date and time when I would be ready. Remember, I thought I was going to have this done back in June. Bah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!!
In any event, Camille and Jason Haley and I got-r-done August 26th, and that was interrupted by a two hour delay while I searched for the original hardware. Thought I knew where it was, sure-the-hell-did-not.
Now all I have left to finish is the backfilling around the concrete pad. Oh, yeah, and find the damn finials for the roof peaks. They’re in a box somewhere around here…
In the end, the shed is neat and clean enough to live in. I almost don’t want to put that filthy lawn mower and all those dirty garden tools into it…