Finally built a garden shed, as the garage was getting rather crowded.
A lot of the material was scrounged, or leftovers, or bought at random intervals, mostly from a friend who had to end his sawmill days and clear out the inventory before moving. So, some odd choices, but it made it more interesting to design as we went.
I had read about the wood preservation technique of Yakisugi ( or shou sugi ban), as mentioned in a post from last year. That is one of the bigger experiments in this adventure. Turns out to use a LOT of propane to do the treatment. That, or perfect the traditional method, which is quicker, but trickier. We decided to just do part of one wall with this method, and wood shingles ( also made by the friend from pine on his land) and metal for the rest.
Flat land is hard to come by here, so we had a contractor flatten an area near the house. The drop off was still rather much, so I am building a retaining wall to stabilize things. I've used tires for walls in the past. While they can be had for free, they require lots of labor and are time consuming, so went with the easy landscaping blocks. each weighs 82 lbs( 37kg).
Since I was rather in a hurry, and not getting any younger, I actually hired a young fellow for the day to help. First time I had ever done that, and it went well.
A harbinger of things to come??
Next up is a greenhouse. Will report on that when it is finished.
Hi Steve,
ReplyDeleteThe new shed looks great! And I so hear you about a shortage of flat land. Shingles look great but are only rarely seen down here - they used to be used on roofs, but cheaper steel sheets changed the practice. They look excellent on the walls. How did you burn and seal the timber, did you have a portable propane torch and slowly move it back and forth across the walls? The effect looks pretty even to me. Is the shed already full? :-)
Cheers. Chris
Hi Chris- the shingles were just because I bought them from the friend who ended his milling days, so these are homemade shingles! Originally I had considered doing the whole siding with shingles, but they are just pine, and I'm not sure how durable they will be. Most of the rest of the walls are steel. This wall is an experiment.
DeleteYes, we used a propane torch to char the boards. Slow and expensive. We also thought about doing much of the walls with charred boards, but switched gears on that as well.
Here is the traditional method. Who knows, maybe the next outbuilding will go this route? Scroll down to the video.
https://criticalconcrete.com/shou-sugi-ban/