DIY Edition: Shedding

When we bought our house last fall we stumbled into a house that I'll refer to as "one in a million" even though there are a few others in our 1970's neighborhood that look quite similar. The gentleman who renovated our home knew the meaning of quality and did a spectacular job on the inside. The outside however was certainly in need of some work and after a full winter of itching to get our hands in our backyard, we were chomping at the bit to keep from lacing it with explosives and starting over.

My better half will tell you that I have a habit of exaggerating. So, tell me, when I say this shed was on the brink of spontaneously combusting, can you really disagree?

78 hours of hard work (divvied up among family and friends) produced this beautiful replacement:

So how did we do it?

• Stayed focused. There are 100 other projects we want to get to, but spreading our money out among them would have slowed our shed project down. STAY FOCUSED and handle one task at a time. It's much more gratifying. Since this, we've made a 'Honey-Do' list to support our future focus.

• Admitted we were inexperienced. Our fathers and brothers knew more than us when it came to cutting, measuring, leveraging, building and general carpentry and electrical work. We let them share honest advice so that we could make decisions with the future in mind. 

• Got educated on exterior paint. Sure, we've painted a billion things, but paint can be tricky. We spent an hour at the Home Depot learning from the paint specialist and getting educated on the tools we needed, the paint that best served our project and technique. After it was all said and done the paint tech even gave us a sweet deal just for being so patient, kind and open to learning. We ended up with Valspar Reserve Exterior paint that was a bit more high end, but only took one coat to cover. According to the paint specialist, that's a rare thing to find!

• Collected coupons. One of our family members is a war vet and gets the military discount at Lowes. They came with us to buy our lumber and we got a really really good deal on it. Additionally we saved up some gift cards and coupons before making our planned purchase. That planning alone saved us $300 the day we picked up the lumber. Our grand total for the shed remodel landed somewhere between $500-$600 after we got the locks, electrical modifications, paint, hinges, lumber, caulking and roller brushes. Not bad for a shed that would have cost over $2,000 to replace brand new!

Have you done something similar to this before? What were some of your challenges/successes? 

Thanks for stopping by the Humble Hammock and looking around; do come back!

Cara