Greengate Ranch Remodel
Remodeling a Daylight Ranch in Oregon

Saturday, July 05, 2008

Garden Shed #2 - Decostruction and Reuse

While I am working away inside the house, my 13 year-old son is making progress on the garden shed "move and improve" project.

The photo below shows the shed with two sides of ship lap siding removed. We are going to reuse it on the new shed, along with some board-and-batten to make it more interesting.



One of the common sense aspects of green building is reusing things, so you don't have to pay for them again. The lap siding is cedar, and really very high quality. My son is prying each piece off and then removing the nails. He seems to be getting about 90% yield out of this process. For the pieces that do break, I will likely cut them to a random single width, and put them on the eves.

Here are flat and side views of a piece.



To buy this new would be at least $2.50 a square foot. I estimate we will get about 220 sq. ft. out of this, or about $600 in material. I am paying my son about $100 to pull it off and clean it up - which is a great deal for both of us.

Notice in the pictures that the floor is 1x4 plank, not plywood. Some of these will become the battens, trim and shelving structure. The wall studs will be doubled-up and used as floor joists, since the walls will be taller on the new shed.

Here is the plan that allows doubled-up 2x4 as joists. They will sit on top of PT 4x6 beams (horizontal ones). Normal span tables don't list using 2x4's for joists, so I am taking the allowable 2x6 span and assuming pairs of 2x4 will provide at least the same support. There are no permits required for this garden shed, but I want to make sure it's well built either way.



The only pieces of the shed that will be discarded are the cedar roof singles. They are in pretty poor shape, with the lot of moss. I will save a could boxes of the clean ones for shims. We are also going to bigger windows, so these will probably be donated to the PDX Rebuilding Center.

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