Modern Shed, the Finale

Here's a couple more shots of the completed shed, hurray!




I ended up taking your advice about trying the window frost spray for that big picture window. It worked kind of eh. It's doing the whole "obscuring" thing, but it's kind of blotchy despite my best efforts with the rattle can. Oh well. Once it bugs me long enough I'll bite the bullet and go with the more expensive plan B which was to put frost film on it.

The bad news is I still haven't gotten any furniture for the porch. Argh. I loved the Alfresco lounge chair and ottoman from Crate and Barrel--which I ordered. But the chairs showed up damaged twice and I got fed up and told them they could have their cheap Chinese crap back. Sadly, I should have known because I have the Alfresco patio furniture and I had to exchange the dining chairs multiple times to get five that weren't defective, bent, or otherwise damaged.
But the real bummer is I can't find anything else I like that would be functional and comfortable for a reasonable price.
Here is basically my dream chair for that darn porch. Only in my dream there are two of them, plus some kind of table/ottoman thingie. And that is not a dream I can afford to make into reality, at least not this year. Maybe I'll save my pennies over the winter though.
Gotta love the awesomeness that is Etsy artisans, though, right? :)

And I DEFINITELY need one of these
I just can't decide. Too. Much. (made in MN.) Awesomeness.

Oh, and did I tell you about that lovely dirt patch by the porch corner? I know, the lush, lovely lawn is distracting (I'm working on making that go mostly away, FWIW), but if you noticed that little pile of rubble there at the corner, it's the remnants of our former firepit which got relocated about ten feet farther north. Because nature always gets the last laugh, that "firepit" I figured was no big deal to interfere with because I could just rake it up and throw some grass seed there, is actually a giant hardened wad of fired clay. Because clay and fire=pottery. Doh. One of the many previously unrealized joys of having clay soil.
Anyway, if anyone has any ideas about what to do about that short of going to rent a jackhammer (for the umpteenth time) and ending up with a big hole in the ground, I'd love to hear it. Seems like I should be able to use a buried wad of hardened clay to my advantage somehow... And it also makes me wonder if there's a way to utilize fire to make an actual building foundation.

Kee Klamp Trellis

Have you heard of Kee Klamp? They're a whole line of plug-and-play fittings that can be used for building just about anything out of fence post or iron pipe, and they're pretty neato. With iron pipe, they accomplish the same thing as standard threaded pipe fittings, only with way, way more flexibility and minus the whole threaded thing. But as I said they also work with lighter weight galvanized fence posts. Perfect for adding a quick and easy something to our once barren back door area.
There's a tough, tough life outside our back door. It's a spot where just about a perfect storm of hostile-to-plant factors come together to make for a pretty unfriendly environment for things that grow. Unfortunately, things that grow are exactly what is needed there.
For a couple of years we had a really cool twisted baby locust tree. It did great and grew like mad and got huge and perfect, right up until it died one winter. So sad. It took me a whole year to accept it was dead, not a little bit because having to cut it down meant having to figure something else out...

Thus began the hunt for solutions to adding some green and vertical to this spot. Something super cold hardy and moisture issue-tolerant and perennial and of a not-too-big scale...which excludes most trees. Kind of a tall order once I got right down to it.
Eventually I decided I liked the lower risk, easier to plant (and remove should this plan B fail) idea of a vine of some sort and that a trellis for said vine would be an interesting way to add some dimension to the otherwise completely flat side of the house. Plus I figured if worse comes to worse and I fail again, I can always resort to a fast-growing annual vine instead.
So anyway, out came the Kee Klamp card. Because it's just too handy and cool of a product not to find a way to use.

Following one of those very non-specific kinds of plans that I seem to excel at, first I figured out what size and shape I wanted for the finished trellis. After acquiring the necessary supplies and fittings, we cut the fence post sections to the appropriate length, hooked the whole thing together and plunked it into place. As I said we went with galvanized steel fence posts which are available at the home center in 10 foot lengths and various diameters, just be sure you choose a size that corresponds to a Kee Klamp size. The actual Kee Klamp joinery is easy as can be--slip the fittings onto the pipe ends and tighten the allen screws to hold them in place. What's not shown here is that the lower section of vertical post is pounded down into the ground a few feet to help hold the whole thing in place:

After the basic structure was built and attached to the house came everyone's favorite activity, cable swaging. We're still working on using up the original, 1000ft. spool of cable I bought to do the interior railings!

We used a plumb bob to get a straight line from the top pole to the bottom, and then drilled holes in the pipe sections so the cable could pass through:

Here's the finished trellis, planted with some super MN hardy grapevines we'll hope make it through the winter.

They don't look like much yet, but I've had great luck with another grapevine in a similarly hostile spot outside our patio sliders and if they take off even sort of as well as that one, we should have a lovely shady wall of green next summer.

The second step of this project is to add some kind of shade sail bit or polycarbonate "roof" section that attaches to the trellis and shelters the doorway a little, but I haven't quite worked up the ambition to tackle that yet. Maybe once the wicked August sunshine and heat ease up.

I KNOW. It's Been FOREVER.

The problem is, I just have way too many projects on my to-do list.

The shed:
Done except for paint on the soffits and a couple of pieces of trim.
The whole tree incident, other than causing the finished product to be slightly less perfectly level than it was prior, turned out to have gone about as well as a tree falling on anything could have, so once Spring rolled around we were basically ready to hit it with roofing and siding.

I went with the same Hardi-panel siding and exposed fastener design we did on the house, along with some corrugated, galvanized roofing leftovers. It took some thought, but we managed to use up just about everything we had in the way of scraps of both siding and metal, so it's a win all around.


The big picture window frame got painted red for a pop of color, and the rest the same grey as the house.
For another couple of hundred bucks in lumber, we carpenter-ed up the rest of the wrap around porch and a ramp topped off with some lovely cedar decking, and I now have the perfect spot for some outdoor lounging...as soon as I find the a great set of chairs and side table.


With some patio pots added. Still waiting for paint on the soffits, but an excellent deal has been scored on some porch chairs and once those arrive, I have no more excuses. And it needs to stop raining every day, of course.

I need to do something to screen the view of the shed contents through the windows. I was originally planning to hang a curtain across the front, inside, because I like the idea of making it seem like more of a little cottage, but now I've thought of the idea of using frost film directly on the windows and I'm waffling between the two.
Shocking, I know.

So, moving on to the next item on our DIY menu...

And Then it Was Winter

In Minnesota, when the weather decides it's done, it's done.

We made quick work of installing the awesome (KEYED!) Craigslist slider and windows, and then spent another couple of hours wrapping the whole thing up tight with Tyvek--perhaps overkill for a shed, but since the plan was to install Hardipanel siding on the exterior to match the house we figured it couldn't hurt just to make sure everything stays nice and dry inside.
The mini-storage style roll up door you can't see in the photo below, but it went in without a hitch in about a half hour. It was an easy job for two people and it works and looks great and was definitely worth the cost.

There's another one of those cool bubble windows hiding on the west side...

So all that remained for getting weathertight was some roofing. But because everyone's favorite (or not) big box store "pro desk" took two weeks and three different people to figure out how to order our 1 1/4" corrugated galvanized sheet metal (even though it is a stock item in many stores), and, once they got their act together enough to actually place the order, got it wrong, it was a month before we had anything to work with. Had we been shipped the correct product, we would have beaten the snow, but since we were roofless and the weather wouldn't wait, we covered the roof with Tyvek as a stopgap and considered the project put to bed until Spring.

And then it snowed...that very same night if I recall correctly. A heavy, wet, sloggy snow that coated and stuck to everything. It was actually kind of pretty to wake up to, until I looked out the bedroom window and saw this:

It was a sleepy weekend morning, and unfortunately for Boy, I believe the first words out of my mouth that day were "HOLY S*** A TREE FELL ON OUR SHED".

It was sort of unreal, because after choosing a location in the yard that happened to be near the treeline, we had joked about that very thing. JOKED. As in "it might happen in 20 years kind of joke".
Anyway.
I couldn't bear to go out to assess the situation, what with it suddenly being Winter and all. But Boy and PupCake went to check it out that day and reported back that--amazingly--there was almost no damage to the shed.
WHOOHOOO!

Or not.

Over the next few days, I kept looking at that shed and thinking something was funny, and when that ishy snow melted I finally brought myself to be able to confront the situation in full. As I made my way around the giant tree that I was dreading the idea of having to deal with cutting up, I realized that the tree in all of it's falling glory, had pushed one side of the shed completely off those foundation blocks that we had so painstakingly placed and leveled a few weeks back.

On the bright side, there was really very little damage to the structure--just a hole poked through the sheathing and a chip out of the roof. Quite possibly the most innocuous 'tree fell on it' outcome ever.
On the very dark side, we now needed to figure out how to raise up and rotate the almost completed (and, by this time, full of stuff) building back onto the foundation blocks.

About that project I'll say that digging frozen soil by hand, even if it's just down through eight or ten inches, has an extremely high sucklitude factor. It took most of a day, but Boy and I managed to dig under, jack up and lever the whole darn building up and over with nothing other than brute force, a couple of bottle jacks and some 2 x 4's. It's not an activity I'd look forward to having to repeat-- we've certainly had worse chores, but it did suck with a capital S.

Oh, and I left out the part about getting our truck stuck on the remains of that slushy snowstorm, aka glare ice, in the yard. That was almost as much fun as digging in frozen dirt and moving buildings by hand, and certainly to our neighbors, WAY more entertaining.

Bring on Spring.

DIY Modern Shed, Day Three

Shed, day three. In between another trip to the building supply store for lumber and sheathing, I traversed the cities picking up some recycled windows and a door I found on Craigslist.
MAjor score.
I got a really nice vinyl slider with a keyed lock, a huge picture window and two really neato bubble windows for less than $200. Perfect for the "backyard destination" aspect of the shed.

So we were on to setting the roof trusses. Since the front of the shed will have a 4' deep porch area that I knew I'd want to shade, I designed the roof to have a nice big overhang. Getting the trusses in place and securely strapped and fastened was fairly quick and easy, and other than a lot of nailing. so was the exterior sheathing. Hurray for the light weight parts of the job.



You can see there on the "porch" my scavenged sliding door. That will go into the big opening on the front. In the big plastic wrapped dead body-shaped box is a mini storage style roll up door for that opening on the left side of the building. Since they are custom order and take a while to get, I put in an order for this as soon as I had the overall design finalized and the plans drawn. It showed up with perfect timing, from this place, chosen because they had the best pricing, literally HALF what the local place wanted to charge me. As far as the overall build goes, this was kind of a splurge, but it's got an industrial look that I think will be cool and functionally it just seemed to make sense vs. me taking the time to screw around with finish carpentry (that I suck at) to build and hang one myself. Plus, they come in a whole bunch of cool colors...any guesses what I picked?

Still Building a Modern Shed

So.
We're building a shed, remember?

Day one started with digging sod, leveling and preparing spots for the nine stacks of concrete blocks that will support the underpinnings of the structure. We opted for a floating block foundation--meaning that the blocks just sit on soil roughly at grade level--rather than go to the expense and labor of pouring a concrete slab. This means there's a fair chance we'll have to do the occasional shoring and re-leveling of the structure over the coming decades, but that's a minor deal on the lifetime to-do list.
Once we got all nine foundation pads level and square, we topped them with the three big timber 4" x 6" skids that comprise the rest of the foundation. On top, perpendicular to the skids went the floor joists, all from pressure treated lumber. Then everything got nailed together.

Day two and we're ready to get started on the framing. Since it was the most complex with three openings, we started with the north wall:


I said complex, but this is really about as easy as framing gets. Still, though, lots of nails to pound. At about this point we started to wonder why, after all this time, we still don't have a pneumatic nail gun.

And then the south wall, working in between autumn rain showers:

and then the east and west sides:

It's starting to look like something!

Welcoming the Doldrums of Winter

Happy 2011!
Whew!
I'm finally feeling like I have time to take a deep breath after the craziness that extends from late summer into fall and then into the ubercraziness of the holidays. Thus, I am taking inventory of the project situation, both those balls that I have in the air and those that are yet to be tossed.

First up on the "balls in the air" category is the shed. Yes, a modern shed!! For my backyard! Very exciting!
This ball got tossed in large part due to Boy, who got himself all whipped up last fall and decided that both our vehicles needed to go in the garage this winter.
For the first time ever.
Ahem.
And that left us with a lot of housebuilding tools and lawn and garden stuff in the way, and as driver of vehicle #2, the one newly installed in the garage, it only took about two days of entering it by climbing through the passenger door before I was ready for a bit more free space. So I busted out my pencil and sketch pad and slide rule and designed us up a nifty little shed.
(just kidding about the slide rule, but come to think of it, maybe I need one...?)

Truthfully though, calling this project "a shed" isn't quite fair, because that implies a simple, strictly utilitarian building, and WHERE, I ask you, is the fun and Modern in MNishness in that? Strictly utilitarian, no (and yes, for the umpteenth time, I'm sure Boy wants to strangle me for turning what could have been a simple project into something more complex). A backyard destination that happens to look fun and interesting and still be functional and hold our stuff, YES! Sign me up!

Here is my original sketch of the proposed structure:


For ease of construction and limited waste, The dimensions are 8'x12', with an additional 4' or so given over to a deck that wraps the north and east sides. I knew I wanted to tart the place up with windows and doors (that whole "not just a shed" thing) so I more or less designed the fenestrations and facade based around recycled windows and doors I found on Craigslist. Over the course of a week or two I collected up a very nice gently used vinyl slider, a big (new!) picture window, and two cool bubble windows all for ~$200 and a bit of schlepping. The other supplies--lumber, sheet goods, fasteners and a mini roll-up door came to around $1200. So far, a reasonable budget for a bunch of great storage and a cool addition to our property.

And speaking of budget, I had one. For those of you big spenders, there's lots of cool pre-fab shed options. Those in the modern genre are mostly outrageously expensive. And I mean outrageously, like on the order of 10x or more what I wanted to spend. Great inspiration, not great for our bottom line. And besides, I get itchy when I haven't built anything in a while...

So to come, the dirt of the shed build and other balls yet to be tossed!
One of my goals this year is more Modern in MN, more often, so I hope to be back with you again shortly...

Flesh: Lost and Roasted

So after agonizing all summer over how to finish the facade of my wood fired oven, I finally made a decision...
that led to more agony:

If it weren't for being packed with grout, those ouchies and BIG CHUNKS OF MISSING FLESH would have been a bloody mess. Ouch was the understatement of my entire last week, actually.

Here's the start of the 3D wood-fired oven mosaic adventure from hell that led to a week of the utterly useless and extremely painful fingertips pictured above. I wanted something dimensional to accent what is otherwise a very flat, boring facade, so I concocted a way to make a heat-proof sculptural element around the oven opening using a wire armature and vermicrete, aka a mixture of vermiculite and portland cement that I could cover with a colorful glass mosaic.


(The foil you see here was just a temporary holder-upper)

While the vermicrete cured I started in on adding some totally awesome stainless steel pennyround tile to the main portion of the facade. Big splurge, that stuff.



I think I once saw a t-shirt that said "mosaicists bleed for their art". I need one.
Prior to now I've always kept my stained glass mosiac-ing to flat or flat-ish surfaces...wisely so as it turns out. But hey, as I've said before, suffering for art seems to be sort of my thing...


Applying that gorgeous red glass to the 3D sculpture, no problem. Grouting around those razor sharp shards on such a dimensional surface, BIG, BLOODY PROBLEM. And a problem that I couldn't really bail out on once I'd started. Grouting is fun that way.

But, as has so often been made clear in the whole WFO project, it's all worth it in the end, especially when the end is roasted meat! Big thanks to my pal Brian for the excellent food shot below. Following the mosaic carnage, I threw a party for myself that involved a keg of beer and six roast chickens, and the finger agony was forgotten.