A New Railway Room/Workshop

[peter220950]

Background

 

Just in case anyone is considering building their own shed/railway room I thought I would share my latest diy project to maybe give some ideas, along with an idea of the sort of work and costs involved. It really isn't that difficult, the major downside being the time it takes and the disruption if you are tight for space to store things.

 

I have always had a bog-standard 6 x 8 ft garden shed, but like many it was cold and damp, so of little use except to store garden tools etc. My chop saw and other woodworking tools were suffering and the shed had become useless except as a dumping ground.

 

 

 

Usually about this time of year I would have a tidy up to find the mower and for a week or two the shed was of some use, but still cold and damp.

 

After a bit of thought, and a chance remark from the boss about moving the top patio, I decided to build a ‘proper' shed that would see me out, and which would also give me a workshop and second railway room facility. It was agreed that I could up the size a bit and so planning started.

 

As events turned out the boss changed her mind about the location so I had to compromise on size a bit to keep it on its existing plot, plus a bit of garden.

 

By ‘proper shed' I mean a well insulated draught free, secure, dry workshop with room to stand up in, and which isn't full of garden clutter.

 

So why build yourself rather than buy new? Put simply its a matter of cost, flexibility to build to the exact site available, and getting something closer to a garden room. A 7 x 9 garden shed will cost upwards of £500.00 but that would only give me the same damp draughty structure I already had, while a custom built garden room would be at least 10 or 20 times that.

 

The other reason to do it was that I just like to make things, so it's partly just an extension of my hobbies.

 

The design process had always been modular, so changes in size to fit the available space were quite easy and it has ended up with inside dimensions of 7ft 2 x 8ft 10, (2.2m x 2.7m), not massive, but with an attached bit to put the mower and garden tools in it was the best I was going to get away with, enough to give me a good work space, and room to put the layout up in. I am already fortunate to have a workroom in the house, so this is a luxury that will allow me to spray paint and saw wood in comfort.

 

So for anyone contemplating such a build here are a few observations, lessons learned, and outright c*ck-ups that have occurred over the last couple of years while the preparation, prefabricating, and gathering of bits was taking place

First and foremost is the chaos that such a build entails, particularly if like me you buy second hand and need to store bits because you buy them when they become available.

 

 

 

 

The wall panels were designed to fit in my car, which dictated the wall panel height of 1.82 metres, the maximum I could fit behind the drivers seat with the tailgate shut.

 

The reason for this was because I built the panels at my local ‘Men in Sheds’, like all good timber framed buildings, in a warm factory environment rather than on a workhorse in the garden. Panel widths were between 650mm and 950mm, depending on location.

 

The aim was to pre-fabricate the panels to make the actual build quite fast, the downside was having 11 half finished panels lying around for weeks while they were being built.

 

 

 

To add to the chaos I purchased 2 sheets of 100mm Celotex to go in the floor, two packs of 40mm Celotex for the walls, and metal roof sheeting with attached insulation, all of which had to be stored.

 

 

Feel free to ask any questions, or criticise the construction, I probably won't be able to do a lot to change it now, but always happy to acknowledge failings.

 

I will post details of the construction to date, and sourcing of bits over the next few days to bring the story up to date, where it's currently looking a bit like like a shed, with a polythene sheet for a roof and no windows or door, but I expect things to start moving a bit faster now the site is cleared and the walls are up.

 

Peter

[peter220950]

The Logistics of DIY

 

With the new room now having to be built on the site of the existing shed came a further complication, where to put all of the shed contents, plus the old shed, which was to be moved to a new home. This has stretched the goodwill for the project at times, the window cleaner hasn't been able to get around the back of the house for two months, and garden waste has had to go through the house because the side access is full of wall panels.

Deliveries of cladding and timber caused further disruption to the house access, and while it seemed a good idea to put the 10mm Celotex on the car in the garage it was too good a surface not to load up with the old shed contents, little realising it would give me a problem in the future when I need to get the flooring sorted in the new room.

 

 

 

Its taken getting on for a two years to get to the current position, (walls up and roof structure built), and I'm just starting to get some of the chaos sorted out. The build description is not the same as what has actually happened, as the panels were all built and pre-painted long before foundations commenced.

 

 

The Tecchie bits

With a background of 30 or 40 years in timber framed housing I felt confident enough to produce something that was going to be cosy, some of my decisions might seem a bit out of the ordinary (like putting the floor in after the building was built), but I think I have got most of the construction right.

The Quantity Surveying also helped with planning the build down to the last nuts and bolts, and has proved remarkably accurate. With only the internal electrics to source I am about £90 under budget.

The budget was set at £1892 plus a 10% contingency, meaning the whole thing should come on at a shade under £2000. This excludes travel costs to pick materials up, and tools that I bought along the way, such as the nail gun for the cladding, as I don't really class them as part of the build, just more toys.

 

So at the risk of being a bit too descriptive here's a detailed explanation of the construction of the various elements, along with the science behind some of the construction. I start with the foundations, and will deal with walls roofing, windows and doors when they appear on the scene.

 

Foundations

As with all construction projects the best place to start is with the foundations. I had an existing slab base for the shed, and didn't really want to disrupt it, lifting the slabs just meant more stuff lying around the garden, and which couldn't be removed until the access was cleared. The remaining site was existing garden and a small bit of paving at a lower level, this was going to be brought up to one level until the kind offer of some decking supports meant I could work off the existing levels that were established and stable.

I wanted the building to have as little heat loss as possible and the starting place was the floor, 100mm of insulation was thought to be a minimum, and this dictated the design of the foundation.

 

 

The Actual Build – March 2018

That brings things pretty much up to date, all the pre-planning and fabrication off site meant that it only took one day to get the old shed taken down, the base was prepared over the next two days, with the plants moved from the border and some slabs put down to take the foundation timbers.

 

 

 

I was a little worried when we had heavy snow the day after, and fully expecting to find the plants that had been re-planted to wither, but a week on they all seem to have survived.

The base only took a couple of days to assemble, wrap, level, and foam fill. Bearing in mind these are old man days, which probably only means about 4 hours of work a day.

To keep damp out of the support timbers a membrane of plastic sheeting was laid over the existing slabs, prior to this I had purchased 100 x 100 treated timber fence posts and cut halved joints to form a suitable support for the wall panels and flooring.

 

 

The timbers were laid out, levelled with packers, and screwed together. Once the base had been checked for square the damp proof membrane was wrapped up the sides and fixed over the timbers, and expanding foam was squirted under any sections not in contact with the packers, to take out any bounce in the structure.

 

 

 

 

 

Given that the timbers are treated, and are now wrapped in thick polythene, I'm not expecting to see any deterioration in my lifetime. The slightly unusual route of having a floor installed after the walls have been put up does mean that should there be any movement that makes the floor ‘bounce' I can lift the floor and insulation to gain access and carry out necessary packing and re-levelling with minimal disruption.

 

Next task will be to seat the walls onto the timbers, I just hope the calculations have been correct and that it all fits together.

 

Peter

[tomparryharry]

Thanks Peter, I shall watch your progress with interest.

 

I'm in a slightly different position to you. We have a large earth bank at the rear, which lifts up the level some 3 feet. I'm currently pondering over whether to dig down slightly, or raise up the floor level. I do know that some civil engineering is on the cards, so a cement mixer is probably going to be my next purchase.

 

For those who are 'into' this sort of thing, there are some excellent tutorial videos on Youtube, which will take you through the process of shed building.

 

The one thing is to get some fairly solid rules in place. Do that first! If it's your railway room, then it's 'your' railway room. It's for relaxation, then it's not the washing & drying room.

 

The real upside is that my 'plot' is identical to our neighbour, which is some 12 feet in depth. width is about 30 feet wide, but I don't think I'll get away with that much. We shall see.

 

Security! I'd guess we could fill a book on this. Any ideas?

 

Cheers,

 

Ian.

[peter220950]

Ian,

 

Digging in poses the same issues I have with the fence at the rear, namely the lack of access to maintain the shed and inability to get at anything that falls into the gap. For that reason if you have the room allow enough space to squeeze between any retaining wall and the room walls.

 

The easiest thing to do is to halve the problem and dig down a bit and use the spoil to raise the ground at the other end, but it depends on your site, your preferences, and what foundations you use.

 

As for security I am working on the assumption that the finished construction is almost as substantial as a house. The walls are almost 100mm thick and as I found to my cost the cladding once nailed is difficult to remove.

 

Vulnerable points are usually windows and doors, I picked up a brand new 44mm oak door on Ebay yesterday for £50, which when its in the hardwood frame I have should be as good as the house door, a substantial lock or two should make that entry secure.

 

The windows, again sourced from Ebay, are powder coated aluminium, with double glazed units and substantial timber sub-frames,

 

 

 

 

so I'm hoping it will be secure enough, an alarm and security light is also on the cards, and it's close to the house which should help.

 

I think the secret with security is to make it too much hard work to be worth the effort, the longer they spend trying to get in the more likely they will be discovered, so building solid and doubling up on things like locks is likely to be most succcesful.

 

Peter

[peter220950]

Walls

The wall construction mirrors modern timber frame house design, though slimmed down considerably. This should provide a moisture resistant and well insulated structure that will last better than the shed it replaced.

Starting on the outside, 22mm tongued and grooved cladding has a 10mm air gap over most of its surface which is backed by a breathable membrane (Tyvek), which allows air to enter the structure but if any water happens to get past the cladding it won't go any further, instead it will run down the breathable membrane and out through a gap at the base of the panels onto gthe surrounding ground. This scenario is extremely unlikely, but belt and braces was always my way.

Supporting the external cladding are cls timber studs 63mm x 38mm, the bottom plate being treated, despite being on a membrane and protected by the Tyvek, but best to be sure! The studs are relatively cheap, at around £2.50 for a 2.4m length, but still represented quite a big over spend, I ended up using 70 or 80 lengths in walls and roof.

 

 

 

The walls went up in one day, and with a continuous timber along the head seem to form a pretty substantial structure already. The addition of the roof trusses will make it even stronger.

 

 

 

 

One thing to be mindful of if adopting my method of individual panels is the discrepancy in size between different pieces of cladding. If you have a shed wall that just needs lengths nailing to it there's not a problem, but individual panels will highlight the differences at the joints, and being a bit OCD about these things I had to try to minimise the problem. The planks were nominally 85mm deep, but varied, so I bought 2.4m lengths for the ends, and 3.6m lengths for the sides, then cut them into the three panel widths and numbered them, trying to also match the widths of the adjacent lengths, it seems to have worked reasonably well, though I will still resort to cover strips to deceive the eye.

 

Another issue is with differences in the fit and nailing, which means that even the same sequence of planks can be different on adjacent panels, so I started all cladding at the mid point and worked up and down from it to minimise the errors.

 

The cladding was designed to overlap the timber base by about 50mm, hiding some of the bulk, though the fragility of having just timber cladding at the bottom of the panels meant I left the last plank off until the structure was up.

 

 

 

Behind the Tyvek membrane is room for 40mm Celotex insulation which is finally backed with a waterproof barrier to seal the structure inside, either using aluminium tape onto the foil backed insulation or a layer of polythene. The jury is out on the internal lining, I originally planned to use 6mm plywood, but I could still use plasterboard, any input from those with experience of the options is welcome, I think the ply will be more resistant to damage, but white painted plasterboard would give a more professional feel and marginally better insulation.

 

The science of all the above is to prevent condensation within the structure, often a problem with sheds that don't get the layers in the right order. Condensation occurs when air meets a cold surface and as the ability to carry moisture is diminished by the drop in temperature and moisture is deposited. If the polythene/foil barrier is on the cold side of the wall i.e. towards the outside, warm air from within seeps into the structure, cools and forms water within the wall, leading to mould and the prospect of rot setting in. The Tyvek allows cold air in but it doesn't get near the internal surfaces because of the insulation, and warm air inside can't penetrate the wall to get through to any cold surfaces. This ‘interstitial condensation' was a particular concern with the roof cladding, of which more later on.

 

The individual wall panels are bolted together with a thin compressible strip between to keep out draughts, all bolts and nails for the cladding are stainless steel to prevent rust spots or difficulties with taking it apart.

 

 

The cladding is treated timber but I wanted to paint the shed to tone it down a bit, one thing I have noticed with sheds, particularly with thin cladding, is that a coat of paint on the outside alone can lead to the timber distorting. Although I was using quite chunky timber I felt it wise to paint both sides of the cladding to equalise the stresses, and this brought up the problem that I couldn't access the back of the cladding, so painting had to be done prior to assembly. It took a while to realise that painting the back of the timbers obscured all the panel numbering, until I started to use a thick marker pen.

Fortunately all of the painting to the cladding panels was completed when the weather was fine last summer, they will get a second coat, but it's not critical when it's done.

 

 

At the corners, concealed by the overlapping cladding, are 70mm x 70mm treated fence posts to join the different elevations together. It was at this point that it started raining, so as a quick interim measure I bolted the gable end pieces on and put a temporary polythene roof to keep things dry.

 

 

 

The gable trusses will have to be taken off again when it's dry, in order to finish the cladding at the top of the panels, and complete the weatherproofing.

 

Peter

[Guius]

Have you got your power supply cable in at this point Peter?

 

Guy

[peter220950]

I wasn't going to go too deeply in to that as it's not really as substantial as I would like. I really should have a separate supply, but putting this back to the Consumer Unit will cause a lot of disruption in the house, so maybe that's something for another day.

 

It is therefore fed from the existing ground floor ring main, It's not something I would encourage anyone else to do, and there's the question of current Regulations around wiring.

 

I consider myself a 'Competent Person' when it comes to wiring, having put all the wiring and new Consumer Unit in when I extended the house, (and know my way around IEE Regs up to 17th edition) but it's very much a case of do as I say not as I do, and it's a moot point whether it's notifiable, I am using existing wiring put in back in the 1980's so in theory I'm just removing the socket and re-fixing. Most power tools will be fed via a shop vac which will switch on when the tool is activated, and the lighting is likely to be LED, so the only real grey area is whether re-wiring the lights from the old shed is new work or not. I may well get it signed off when completed so there's no insurance implication.

 

There is currently still the original shed supply, buried under the black dpm membrane, it's fed from the rear of the garage through a 50mm pvc conduit underground, and will be exposed before the floor insulation goes in.

 

Peter

[peter220950]

A quick update on progress, which has been hampered a bit by the weather, but considering it's now only 10 days since the walls went up I'm happy with the couple of days work I managed to get in. The room doesn't look a lot different, but I have completed a lot of the jobs that were needed to fix and seal the panels.

 

The walls were put up in about six hours, though all except the wall adjacent to the fence needed additional bits of cladding top and bottom, and another coat of paint. Rain stopped play so I hurriedly fitted the end trusses and ridge to sling some polythene over as a temporary roof.

 

Most normal builds put a base in, then the floor, and build off that, my ‘system' allows the walls and roof to go up without worrying about the flooring, this can then be fitted in the dry. It would also have been a massive job to get the plywood around the house if the wall panels were still in the way, and I would have needed marine ply to prevent water damage.

A further advantage is being able to check the inside for any sign of moisture before the floor and wall insulation goes in, any leaks can be dealt with before they cause problems.

 

The temporary roof proved a bit unreliable first time around, and the next day the room had a lot of water in it, so once it stopped raining I re fixed it. There was also a lot of ingress through the openings, so the windows were put in as a temporary fix. A curtain of Tyvek went over the door opening and seems to be keeping the rain and snow at bay at present.

 

 

The lack of the bottom layer of cladding caused a minor problem as water ran down the cladding onto the foundation timbers and into the room.

 

First job tackled was to actually fix the panels to the foundation, up to now self weight was all that was holding it down. Large coach bolt type screws were put into the bottom rails with some thin packing shims where necessary. I could then deal with the areas where water could be seen inside. The bottom row of cladding was fixed, and appears to have stopped any water getting in at low level.

 

 

The gable end trusses were next for attention, they were removed, the missing strip of cladding inserted on the top of the walls, and the trusses were re-seated on a bed of clear silicone, while the mastic gun was out I also sealed the timber window surrounds into the wall cladding, and this now seems to have stopped any water ingress except at the panel joints, where a cover strip has yet to be fitted.

 

So with a days work the room was starting to get sufficiently well sealed and stable to make a start on the next phases.

 

 

 

Having dealt with the foundations and walls here are the details of the rest of the components I propose to use, to complete the envelope.

 

 

Windows and Doors

 

As mentioned earlier, I managed to get hold of some powder coated aluminium double glazed windows and timber sub frames from Ebay, for £75 a piece, and now they are in place there's another chunk of the build that's moved out of the house.

 

Windows and doors seem to be expensive items to source for projects like this, and making your own without a lot of machinery is complex.

The doorframe had already been purchased, and cut down to the panel height of the room walls (1.82m), after a bit of trawling on Ebay a suitable door was sourced, but also required 250mm taking off the height, not an easy task.

 

 

Cutting substantial lumps from the top and bottom of a door leaves it very weak, so I took off the entire bottom rail, re-cut all the tenons on the intermediate uprights, and then slotted it all together again. All this was done on the bench at ‘Men in Sheds' where there's plenty of room and suitable machinery, as all mine is in store in the garage.

 

 

 

Roof

 

I thought long and hard about the roof, tiles are a bit overkill, and a bit heavy, ply and felt is O.K but needs insulating and has a limited life span, and coated steel is a nightmare to insulate without getting the interstitial condensation problems I mentioned earlier, as its hard to completely fill all the voids in the profiles of the sheeting. Because the under lining of the roof hides what may be happening inside it's difficult to see if there's a problem before it manifests itself in expensive damage.

Polycarbonate sheeting was an option, the triple walled stuff gives reasonable insulation, but its expensive and I'm not a great fan.

 

A trawl through Ebay over a month or so found two 7 metre lengths of insulated metal cladding down in Gloucestershire, this has a 40mm insulation bonded to the back of the cladding and an inside white coated steel lining. The cladding was olive green, which matched the cladding perfectly, and at £140 it was a cheap solution, requiring little support and no further internal insulation or ceiling treatment, the only problem was getting it home, fortunately the vendor had a disc cutter and we chopped it into six lengths, each one metre wide and two and a bit long. - It looked a bit like a house on top of the car, but arrived safely, now all I have to do is figure out how to trim it to size, and source some flashings and ridge capping to match.

 

 

 

Back to the build on site, the next job was to start to fix the wall insulation that has been sitting at the top of the garden for six months,

 

 

this seems to cut well with a carving knife, and wedges in between the studs, and even though the rain and snow have been making it hard to get any enthusiasm for going out into the cold, it's actually already getting quite pleasant to work out there.

 

 

Fitting the roof and door has to be the next priority. A start was made on painting the door frame, but the weather stopped any further progress.

 

 

 

Just got to wait for it to thaw a bit now.

 

Peter

Edited March 18, 2018 by peter220950

[tomparryharry]

A quick update on progress, which has been hampered a bit by the weather, but considering it's now only 10 days since the walls went up I'm happy with the couple of days work I managed to get in. The room doesn't look a lot different, but I have completed a lot of the jobs that were needed to fix and seal the panels.

 

The walls were put up in about six hours, though all except the wall adjacent to the fence needed additional bits of cladding top and bottom, and another coat of paint. Rain stopped play so I hurriedly fitted the end trusses and ridge to sling some polythene over as a temporary roof.

 

Most normal builds put a base in, then the floor, and build off that, my ‘system' allows the walls and roof to go up without worrying about the flooring, this can then be fitted in the dry. It would also have been a massive job to get the plywood around the house if the wall panels were still in the way, and I would have needed marine ply to prevent water damage.

A further advantage is being able to check the inside for any sign of moisture before the floor and wall insulation goes in, any leaks can be dealt with before they cause problems.

 

The temporary roof proved a bit unreliable first time around, and the next day the room had a lot of water in it, so once it stopped raining I re fixed it. There was also a lot of ingress through the openings, so the windows were put in as a temporary fix. A curtain of Tyvek went over the door opening and seems to be keeping the rain and snow at bay at present.

 

20180318_112120-1632x1224.jpg

 

The lack of the bottom layer of cladding caused a minor problem as water ran down the cladding onto the foundation timbers and into the room.

 

First job tackled was to actually fix the panels to the foundation, up to now self weight was all that was holding it down. Large coach bolt type screws were put into the bottom rails with some thin packing shims where necessary. I could then deal with the areas where water could be seen inside. The bottom row of cladding was fixed, and appears to have stopped any water getting in at low level.

 

20180316_140805-1632x1224.jpg

 

The gable end trusses were next for attention, they were removed, the missing strip of cladding inserted on the top of the walls, and the trusses were re-seated on a bed of clear silicone, while the mastic gun was out I also sealed the timber window surrounds into the wall cladding, and this now seems to have stopped any water ingress except at the panel joints, where a cover strip has yet to be fitted.

 

So with a days work the room was starting to get sufficiently well sealed and stable to make a start on the next phases.

 

 

 

Having dealt with the foundations and walls here are the details of the rest of the components I propose to use, to complete the envelope.

 

 

Windows and Doors

 

As mentioned earlier, I managed to get hold of some powder coated aluminium double glazed windows and timber sub frames from Ebay, for £75 a piece, and now they are in place there's another chunk of the build that's moved out of the house.

 

Windows and doors seem to be expensive items to source for projects like this, and making your own without a lot of machinery is complex.

The doorframe had already been purchased, and cut down to the panel height of the room walls (1.82m), after a bit of trawling on Ebay a suitable door was sourced, but also required 250mm taking off the height, not an easy task.

 

Screenshot_20180318-130433-600x960.png

 

Cutting substantial lumps from the top and bottom of a door leaves it very weak, so I took off the entire bottom rail, re-cut all the tenons on the intermediate uprights, and then slotted it all together again. All this was done on the bench at ‘Men in Sheds' where there's plenty of room and suitable machinery, as all mine is in store in the garage.

 

20180315_173614-1224x1632.jpg

 

20180315_173621-1632x1224.jpg

 

Roof

 

I thought long and hard about the roof, tiles are a bit overkill, and a bit heavy, ply and felt is O.K but needs insulating and has a limited life span, and coated steel is a nightmare to insulate without getting the interstitial condensation problems I mentioned earlier, as its hard to completely fill all the voids in the profiles of the sheeting. Because the under lining of the roof hides what may be happening inside it's difficult to see if there's a problem before it manifests itself in expensive damage.

Polycarbonate sheeting was an option, the triple walled stuff gives reasonable insulation, but its expensive and I'm not a great fan.

 

A trawl through Ebay over a month or so found two 7 metre lengths of insulated metal cladding down in Gloucestershire, this has a 40mm insulation bonded to the back of the cladding and an inside white coated steel lining. The cladding was olive green, which matched the cladding perfectly, and at £140 it was a cheap solution, requiring little support and no further internal insulation or ceiling treatment, the only problem was getting it home, fortunately the vendor had a disc cutter and we chopped it into six lengths, each one metre wide and two and a bit long. - It looked a bit like a house on top of the car, but arrived safely, now all I have to do is figure out how to trim it to size, and source some flashings and ridge capping to match.

 

20170825_142223-1224x1632.jpg

 

20170825_142238-1224x1632.jpg

 

Back to the build on site, the next job was to start to fix the wall insulation that has been sitting at the top of the garden for six months,

 

20180312_112019-1632x1224.jpg

 

this seems to cut well with a carving knife, and wedges in between the studs, and even though the rain and snow have been making it hard to get any enthusiasm for going out into the cold, it's actually already getting quite pleasant to work out there.

 

20180314_090807-1632x1224.jpg

 

20180318_112145-1632x1224.jpg

Fitting the roof and door has to be the next priority. A start was made on painting the door frame, but the weather stopped any further progress.

 

20180318_112219-1632x1224.jpg

 

20180318_112055-1632x1224.jpg

 

Just got to wait for it to thaw a bit now.

 

Peter

 I'm still watching your progress over here. I like the idea of the profile roof sheets.

 

Cheers,

 

Ian.

[millerhillboy]

What a great project and you clearly know your onions and also great to hear about the mens shed project which I think is superb.

 

However what I was intending to say was that lock wise you might like to consider some locks along the lines of these...

 

https://www.abs-secure.co.uk

 

I recently replaced all our house locks with these after being pointed at a youtube video about lock snapping.

[peter220950]

Further advantage was taken of the improved weather to glue up the altered door and give it a coat of preservative, its not fitted properly yet but it now provides some protection from rain,

 

 

 

Then it was onto fitting the roof trusses properly.

 

 

The roof truss design was perhaps the least successful part of my design, I should probably have let them slope down over the edge of the panels with a birdsmouth notch onto the wall plate. The current design is fine at the two ends, where the wallplate provides continuous support along their length, but the intermediate trusses don’t really have much bearing on the wall, and are tapered to nothing over the bearing area. It's not really a major issue as it's all a bit over designed, and I have managed to hang from the individual trusses without any deflection, but I put some supplementary spreaders onto the ends of the trusses to help.

 

 

It might not be technically very good, but having fitted the roof, and climbed on it, there isn't a lot of deflection and the whole structure has become very solid with the additional bracing to the walls.

 

One of the reasons for keeping the roof tight to the wall was to allow for a small gutter without fouling the door, all of this bit of the build was fluid until I cut the roof sheets to size.

 

After measuring up the roof sheets, and trying a panel out, I concluded that I only really needed 2 intermediate trusses, as the composite roof panels are very rigid. As I had already made 4 trusses I put an additional truss either side of the centre panel, this will provide support for some timber storage in the roof, accessed from the central area.

 

Once fixed in position strips of foam rubber were put on top of the trusses to even up any irregularities in my woodwork.

 

 

Now the weather has started to improve a bit I've had a chance to experiment with cutting the metal roof sheets, the initial cuts had been done with a large petrol disc cutter, but this made quite a mess as the plastic coating melted and looked pretty rough. (right hand side of the strip). Initial experiments with a small electric hand saw seemed to give much better finish (left hand side of the strip), but the saw blades didn’t last particularly well, so I have now resorted to a small angle grinder with a metal cutting disc, which is a cheaper alternative, and works well.

 

 

 

Having cut the roof sheets into six pieces on site I didn't have any room for error with the cutting to size, as there were no spares. In hindsight I could have cut eight pieces, but at the time didn't know how long the sheets needed to be.

So with a great deal of trepidation, and several measures, I cut the first panel and trial fitted it, fortunately it only needed about 20mm trimming off, and it allowed me to ascertain how much needed cutting from the bottom sheet, to clear the gutter and allow a closer fit at the ridge.

 

Once I had one sheet cut it was only a matter of a couple of hours to cut the rest, making sure the overlapping edges worked correctly for the two sides. The panels were then cleaned up, and stacked in two sets, ready for fixing.

 

 

As with the wall panels the actual fix was a bit of an anti-climax, the whole roof was fitted and screwed down in around three hours, I'm particularly pleased by the internal finish of powder coated steel, it bounces the light around well, and looks pretty nifty.

 

 

 

It's another milestone, and justifying all the preparation works that took so long, bearing in mind that it's less than 3 weeks since I put the foundations down, and the weather has been pretty awful.

 

 

All that's needed now to finish the roof, is to source some ridge and verge capping in similar coated steel, and then I can fit the timbers to support the guttering. At least with 99% sealed roof I can order and fit the flooring and hang the door.

 

Peter

[tomparryharry]

Further advantage was taken of the improved weather to glue up the altered door and give it a coat of preservative, its not fitted properly yet but it now provides some protection from rain,

 

20180319_160050-1632x1224.jpg

 

20180320_090832-1224x1632.jpg

 

Then it was onto fitting the roof trusses properly.

 

20180323_115500-1632x1224.jpg

 

The roof truss design was perhaps the least successful part of my design, I should probably have let them slope down over the edge of the panels with a birdsmouth notch onto the wall plate. The current design is fine at the two ends, where the wallplate provides continuous support along their length, but the intermediate trusses don’t really have much bearing on the wall, and are tapered to nothing over the bearing area. It's not really a major issue as it's all a bit over designed, and I have managed to hang from the individual trusses without any deflection, but I put some supplementary spreaders onto the ends of the trusses to help.

 

20180312_112608-1632x1224.jpg

 

It might not be technically very good, but having fitted the roof, and climbed on it, there isn't a lot of deflection and the whole structure has become very solid with the additional bracing to the walls.

 

One of the reasons for keeping the roof tight to the wall was to allow for a small gutter without fouling the door, all of this bit of the build was fluid until I cut the roof sheets to size.

 

After measuring up the roof sheets, and trying a panel out, I concluded that I only really needed 2 intermediate trusses, as the composite roof panels are very rigid. As I had already made 4 trusses I put an additional truss either side of the centre panel, this will provide support for some timber storage in the roof, accessed from the central area.

 

Once fixed in position strips of foam rubber were put on top of the trusses to even up any irregularities in my woodwork.

 

20180323_115446-1632x1224.jpg

 

Now the weather has started to improve a bit I've had a chance to experiment with cutting the metal roof sheets, the initial cuts had been done with a large petrol disc cutter, but this made quite a mess as the plastic coating melted and looked pretty rough. (right hand side of the strip). Initial experiments with a small electric hand saw seemed to give much better finish (left hand side of the strip), but the saw blades didn’t last particularly well, so I have now resorted to a small angle grinder with a metal cutting disc, which is a cheaper alternative, and works well.

 

20180319_160036-1632x1224.jpg

 

20180319_161544-1632x1224.jpg

 

Having cut the roof sheets into six pieces on site I didn't have any room for error with the cutting to size, as there were no spares. In hindsight I could have cut eight pieces, but at the time didn't know how long the sheets needed to be.

So with a great deal of trepidation, and several measures, I cut the first panel and trial fitted it, fortunately it only needed about 20mm trimming off, and it allowed me to ascertain how much needed cutting from the bottom sheet, to clear the gutter and allow a closer fit at the ridge.

 

Once I had one sheet cut it was only a matter of a couple of hours to cut the rest, making sure the overlapping edges worked correctly for the two sides. The panels were then cleaned up, and stacked in two sets, ready for fixing.

 

20180322_123428-1632x1224.jpg

 

As with the wall panels the actual fix was a bit of an anti-climax, the whole roof was fitted and screwed down in around three hours, I'm particularly pleased by the internal finish of powder coated steel, it bounces the light around well, and looks pretty nifty.

 

20180323_150446-1632x1224.jpg

 

20180323_150509-1632x1224.jpg

 

It's another milestone, and justifying all the preparation works that took so long, bearing in mind that it's less than 3 weeks since I put the foundations down, and the weather has been pretty awful.

 

20180323_150428-1632x1224.jpg

 

All that's needed now to finish the roof, is to source some ridge and verge capping in similar coated steel, and then I can fit the timbers to support the guttering. At least with 99% sealed roof I can order and fit the flooring and hang the door.

 

Peter

Hi Pete. Probably a bit late now, but I invested in a drill-driven nibbler. It's compact to work through small radius profiles for large sheets. A word of warning though. The 'chads' are quite extensive, so find a way to recover the rubbish afterwards.

 

I like the shed. Still taking plenty of interest.

 

Cheers,

 

Ian.

[peter220950]

Hi Ian,

 

I had purchased a small drill attachment but it has a problem with the double skinned sheet with insulation bonded between it, the bottom of the nibbler gets stuck in the insulation.

 

In the end the small angle grinder was fine, with a 1mm blade it cut nicely, although the 4 1/2" discs wear reasonably quickly, and you need a newish disc to get into the corners of the profiles. I only used 3 discs and at only 80p each it was the quickest and easiest way in the end.

 

It has rained in the night, so I can't wait to go and see if its all working as it should do, it will be useful to check where the rain comes off the sheets in relation to the proposed gutter, I'm using Screwfix shed stuff, and its quite narrow at 76mm.

 

Peter

[tomparryharry]

Hi Ian,

 

I had purchased a small drill attachment but it has a problem with the double skinned sheet with insulation bonded between it, the bottom of the nibbler gets stuck in the insulation.

 

In the end the small angle grinder was fine, with a 1mm blade it cut nicely, although the 4 1/2" discs wear reasonably quickly, and you need a newish disc to get into the corners of the profiles. I only used 3 discs and at only 80p each it was the quickest and easiest way in the end.

 

It has rained in the night, so I can't wait to go and see if its all working as it should do, it will be useful to check where the rain comes off the sheets in relation to the proposed gutter, I'm using Screwfix shed stuff, and its quite narrow at 76mm.

 

Peter

Hi Pete,

 

Can I suggest that if you have a piece of off cut profile sheet, you can cut it lengthways, and bend of said sheet to your own requirements. It works for me. If you are lucky to have enough, cut the sheet at 1& 1/2 of a full profile. The half profile give you a fixing area, and the remaining 'full size profile' is used to form your gutter.

 

Cheers,

 

Ian.

 

PS. What wood did you use for your triangular 'gusset' on your trusses?

[peter220950]

Hi Pete,Can I suggest that if you have a piece of off cut profile sheet, you can cut it lengthways, and bend of said sheet to your own requirements. It works for me. If you are lucky to have enough, cut the sheet at 1& 1/2 of a full profile. The half profile give you a fixing area, and the remaining 'full size profile' is used to form your gutter.Cheers,Ian.PS. What wood did you use for your triangular 'gusset' on your trusses?

Interesting idea, but unfortunately I think the offcuts are too short to be of much use, though I will check it out when I'm back at home, as I mentioned if I had planned the cutting of the sheets better I could have left myself enough to spare, but it's a bit academic now.

 

I might look at the same principle for the barge boards, as most of the flashings are 150mm wide, which is a bit too much for the top section that lies on the roof, but I will know more when I get a chance to visit the local(ish) clading man to get the ridge capping.

 

The gussets are only 6mm ply either side of the cls timbers, again it's a bit unneccesary but it saved getting the gang nailed connectors that you see on full sized trusses, in reality I think one truss in the middle to support the ridge would probably have sufficed, but it fell in the middle of the door frame, so two went in above a pair of vertical studs either side. The secondary trusses only went in as a future proofing option to take timber storage and possibly an air filtration unit to remove sawdust from the air.

 

Peter

[peter220950]

Three weeks on from the last posting and I think I'm getting close to completion, I hadn't quite realised what had been done ‘till I looked back at the pictures.

 

The first task was to move all the stored junk in the garage to access the Celotex for under the flooring, this was then cut into sections and fitted between the joists.

 

 

Once completed I could order the plywood flooring, and while I was waiting I cut some Celotex to fit the triangular section at the top of the walls, under the roof. A filler piece of spare boarding was then cut to seal this area, I have left it loose at present as it seems to be an ideal cavity to run wiring to wall socket drops later.

 

 

 

After tidying up the external boarding and joints it left one area where there was no weather protection, this was where the external tool store was to be located.

 

 

The framework was put together in the shed, and a test fit of the mower was made, while the rain continued to fall, and a trial fit against the wall seemed to work.

 

 

The store was then protected with polythene and breather membrane, and it was fixed to the main shed. Cladding had been pre-cut to fit and was fitted to the sides, and the whole thing was finally fixed and a temporary roof fitted.

 

 

 

 

By now most of the timber had been used and the side access was almost usable, for the first time for months, just in time for the arrival of the plywood flooring. The three sheets were unloaded and stacked on the drive, but it soon became apparent that manhandling them on my own was not an option, cutting 200mm off the end, and 100mm off the length reduced the weight just enough to allow me to carry them around and fit them, making the room usable for the first time.

 

 

Next job was to put up some guttering, to stop water splashing up the walls, final fitting out will be completed when I can finalise the position of a water butt. The guttering runs through the tool store where it forms a valley gutter between the two roofs.

 

 

In order to protect the flooring from the monsoon like weather we have been suffering the only remaining weatherproofing was to hang the door, this has also made the room secure, so I could move tools out there and work in all weather.

Having looked to get a suitable door to the tool store, and failed, I decided that I would have to make one, some t&g planking was purchased and the framework was laid out using leftover timbers, it hasn't been assembled yet, but can be built in an hour or so.

 

 

 

The room walls were then lined with polythene to provide a vapour barrier, and the decision made on lining material. I have decided on plasterboard, rather than plywood, its not as durable, but I want to paint to walls white, and painted ply didn't do it for me somehow. The boards have been fixed, filled, and sanded, ready for paint and skirting boards, a bonus of the polythene being too long was that it has helped protect the floor from joint filler and dust.

 

 

 

 

 

So that brings it back up to date, I have purchased some roof flashings on ebay, which will enable the roof to be completed, the water butt has arrived and will allow final fitting of the gutter, the store door needs assembling, and the walls need painting and skirting and architrave fitting. A small electrical consumer unit is on order and will allow lighting and power on a better supply than the 13a extension lead in use at present.

 

Overall it seems to be working well as a workshop, the insulation is so good that just having a work light on means I can work in a tee shirt in the room, there seems to be adequate light from the three windows, and my fears about it not being big enough seem to be unfounded so far.

 

Hopefully the warmer weather this next week should see further progress.

 

Peter

Edited April 14, 2018 by peter220950

[peter220950]

Two weeks on and the room is just about finished, the walls were painted and any minor blemishes tidied up.

 

 

The flashings were a good find on Ebay, for £25 plus a trip up to Shrewsbury, and with a bit of metal Origami, have finished the roof.

 

 

 

 

The guttering was completed and the water butt fitted, though I have just discovered it need an overflow, as with the current weather it's already full to overflowing.

 

 

Advantage was taken of a couple of days decent weather to clear coat the skirting and architrave.

 

 

And the roof to the store was trimmed to size, fixed, and fitted with flashings.

 

 

The electric consumer unit has been fixed, and just awaits the lights and sockets to be installed.

 

 

The garden store has had a shelf fitted, and the door has been put together and painted.

 

 

 

 

 

Trims to the top of the walls were painted, and window surrounds were varnished and fitted, and I was almost there.

 

 

The floor finish was something that I have been pondering on for a while. Ideally some sort of vinyl cushion floor or rubber matting would have been ideal, but after a visit to B&Q I decided that while laminate flooring was not ideal it was cheap, at around £5 a square metre. While looking around I noticed packs of damaged flooring for a fiver, three packs and a bit of underlay, saw me sorted for less than £30, plus a 10% OAP discount. Its not an ideal finish, and I suspect that it wont last long, but it tidies the room up. The skirtings have been screwed in, to allow for replacing the floor finish, and it has now turned from a construction site into the finished article.

 

 

 

It just needs the electrics fitting and the door glazing and I'm there.

 

Peter

[peter220950]

Well this is the last update on the workroom as it's pretty much complete now. I'm just starting to get things straight in there so this is a concluding post to wrap things up.

 

The door to the garden store was hung, and the mower and tools fitted, there's a small compressor in there as well, which will serve an airline in the room for air powered tools.

 

 

 

Advantage was taken of the space in the roof trusses at either end of the room to store things, ply was laid between the trusses and one half is a timber store while the other has trays with paints, and things like inspection lights and cable reel in it.

 

 

 

The underside of the storage areas was then looked at to tidy up, there were some offcuts of the roof sheeting left over, and before I took them to the tip I stripped the white metal under cladding from the insulation and cut it to fit between the roof joists.

 

 

The panels were then cleaned up and holes cut for 4 LED panels to light the space, they work well and provide plenty of light. The exposed woodwork on the underside of the joists has also been painted white.

 

 

 

Wiring up of lights and power sockets has been completed and double glazed units fitted to the door.

 

 

 

 

Finally advantage was taken of the sunny weather to apply the final coat of stain to the exterior.

 

 

 

So that's about it, it's come out slightly above my budgeted cost, but that’s due to the addition of the garden store. For around 2k I have effectively got another room to the house and can now get back to railway modelling, and next time I'm in the dog house I've got a nice warm dry kennel to go to.

 

Peter