In case of every house there are a lot of things that you have to find storage space for, especially in case you have a garden and you are looking for a place to store the gardening tools in. A very good solution might be to build a storage shed.
The first thing that you will have to do is to create the foundation. In the majority of the cases it is enough to have an on-grade foundation made of concrete blocks or pressure-treated wood timbers. Place these on the ground. Avoid building a shed in a low-lying area to protect the foundation against erosion. Also remember that the larger sheds require permanent foundations.
You have to think about air circulation too. The water could make the wood rot, ruining your shed. This is why the lowest wood part, the mudsill, should be at least six inches above the ground. There should be a distance of at least 2-3 feet between the shed and the vegetation, like trees and shrubs to keep the shed dry. This way it will also be easier to paint and repair the shed if needed.
There are many ways to save money when building a shed: use three-tab roof shingles instead of the architectural shingles, or install grooved-plywood. But you should really focus on the materials used for the floor of the shed.
When you are building the floor frame, including the mudsill, the perimeter band joints and the floor joints consider using pressure-treated lumber. A lot of prefabricated sheds don’t use this kind of lumber, and so these sheds are just perfect – for the indoors.
In case you are living in a region with a lot of moisture and numerous wood-boring bugs, like Alabama, Florida and the Gulf Coast states, consider using pressure-treated plywood for the floor deck.
You should be looking for low maintenance materials to build the shed with. You might have to pay a little more for these, but it is worth it on the long run. As an example you could use white PVC trim boards. You won’t have problems with warps, bugs, decay or splitting and you don’t have to paint it either.
Other materials that you could consider include aluminum or vinyl windows, fiberglass or steel doors, faux-slate roof shingles, composite decking in case of the steps, fiber-cement siding and some other materials of the kind.
