Over Labor Day weekend I was able to spend a lot of time working on the shed project. As you can see in this photo I’ve poured the concrete for the front four footings for the deck. Admittedly, I didn’t get as much accomplished over the weekend as I wanted to. I would have liked to have completed all the footings, but there were a few mishaps.

By late Sunday afternoon, I had spent most of my time lining up the fiber forms for my footings and getting them level. I was just about to tear open a bag of concrete when I noticed it wasn’t concrete at all, but sand mix. Now sand mix is fine for holding a couple of rocks together on a small rock wall, but it won’t support a deck. Why did I buy sand mix? Well, the bag is about the same color as the bags of concrete, except the sand mix is 40 pounds whereas the concrete bags weigh 60 pounds. I guess I was looking at the 40 on the bag instead of the contents; I thought I would spare my back an extra 20 pounds. Well, no such luck. Having realized my mistake before I made it much worse, I loaded my six bags of sand mix into the car and called it a day. I would have to wait until Monday to exchange them at Home Depot.

Speaking of Home Depot, what’s up with those flat carts there? It seems like every cart I choose has a square wheel. I always sound like a drum corps coming down the aisle. People stare, but it’s happened to me so many times that at this point I take pride in making my cart bang as loud and rapidly as possible.

My second mishap was that I may have slightly sprained my ankle. Fortunately, Sharyl was there to fix me up with an ice pack and an Ace bandage. Those Ace bandages are amazing. I don’t understand how wrapping my ankle up could prevent it from aching, but it worked. I was able to get out there Monday and work anyway.

The plan now is to have the other footings installed by Friday or Saturday. Once the footings are dry, I’ll work on building the frame for the deck. It may take some time to get the frame square and level, but afterwards, the pace of this project should pick up dramatically.

We’ve finally had a few days without rain. So I’ve been able to work on the shed again. Click the picture to see the most recent step in the process. Here, I’ve used batterboards and mason’s string to layout the area that I’m going to excavate for the shed’s platform. The next step is to dig the hole out to a depth of three inches. Then I’ll be putting in the concrete footings for the platform.

The thing about sheds is that they are built to withstand falling down. That’s great if you have a shed you like, but it makes it hard to dismantle one. I didn’t exactly think I could just kick it and knock it over, but dismantling it was considerably more difficult than I imagined. The situation was complicated by rusted bolts that needed to be cut around with metal sheers forcing me to remove one aluminum panel at a time. But after a few days work, I was able to take down the entire thing and the sanitation department was nice enough to haul the scraps away the next day.

What remains is the frame of the foundation. Most of the wood is rotten, so this can easily be broken up with an axe. But as you can see in the photo if you click on it, years of flooding have deposited an awful lot of mud between the slats. All of that will have to be moved in order to make room for the new foundation. But what will I do with all this mud? Maybe I’ll slip a little over my neighbors’ fences each day.

Another cause for concern is that the shed’s location is obviously a low point in my yard. If I build it up, will I not inevitably create another low point? Is the low point I know better than the low point I don’t? It’s a bit like the war in Iraq I suppose; do I want to fight the rainwater over there, where the shed is, so that I don’t have to fight it over here, near my patio? I just don’t know. It’s a bit of a quagmire. The low point, I mean.

This is my old shed. It’s very rusty. The doors won’t close all the way. And when it rains, the shed floods. Over the next few weeks I’ll be working on replacing it with a new shed which will be built on a small deck. I’ll keep track of the status of this project here. The first step, of course, will be the removal of the old shed.