DIY-Prefab

My little 12′ x 12′ woodshed is pretty much done now. I had a friend of mine who needed a little work come over and paint it for me. I also built the sliding barn style door and got it mounted to the track. I still have a couple of minor details to finish like installing some kind of latch on the door and adding the roller on the bottom edge to keep it from swinging in and out.

One neat little detail that I was able to incorporate in the door was to reuse a wood frame window that I removed from our main house a while back when we updated to double pane vinyl windows. It was originally installed tall and narrow but it was just the right size to put in the top of the door turned on its side.

See what you think…

So what did it end up costing to build this little building? I will still have to go back and total up all of the receipts but I can tell you that the total for the materials was definitely less that $1500 total. The majority of the lumber, siding and foundation materials was just a little over $800 and two pickup truck loads from Home Depot. The roofing materials came from Lowes for right around $300. The sliding door track and hardware was just over $100 from a local specialty hardware store here in Portland called W.C. Winks. I had a few odds and ends of materials on hand already but not that much overall. The window was the main special thing I had on hand. The 1×3 trim was a real deal from our local Habitat for Humanity Restore. I think I paid about $12 for most all of what I needed. I borrowed the framing nail gun from my son-in-law which was a big help. I rented the siding nail gun from Home Depot and ending up keeping it longer than I had intended and had to pay something like $97 for it. I could have bought a new one from Harbor Freight for that amount or less. I already have an air compressor and the other tools that I need. I did pay for some of the labor since my youngest son is not fully employed at the moment and my painting friend needed the work too.

How long did it take to build? I spent about 4 hours shopping for the first big pile of building materials the day before we started in earnest. I think I built the framing table top on that first partial day too. The nearest Home Depot is only about 1 mile away so making two trips was not too big of a deal. I also have a pickup truck so that helps. It would have saved some time to have ordered the stuff from a local lumber yard and have had it delivered. With my son’s help we got to the top of the floor on the first full day. We had to do a little more digging than we had anticipated for that part. Also the woodshed is maybe 75′ from where we unloaded the building materials so we had a lot of carrying to do. Day two we had built the walls all the way to the top. Day 3 we had framed the roof and installed the roofing. On day 4 I had to get back to my day job while my son installed and fully caulked all of the exterior trim. The painting took about 1 day total spread out over two partial days. I also built the door over a few hours. The total construction time to get the little building to where it is now appears to have been about 9 total man days of effort. I will have to spend an hour or two to finish up the minor details I mentioned above and to clean out the sawdust and wood scraps out of the building. The interior is completely unfinished with nothing painted so it would take more time to finish the inside more if someone wanted to do that.