Pallet Man-shed, One-man Build, Walls and Roof Up . Part Four

In the last post, we put up all the 2x4's and mounting points to put on the outer layer, so before the winter break, lets get up the walls and roof. It's now September and we have about 2 working months of weekends to before it gets too cold.

1x6x72 dog-earred fence posts, snow fence, 24"x50' rolls of vinyl coated aluminum, and lots of 1 5/8" deck screws. I also had to use a jig-saw to notch 2x4's to secure the roof diagonals to the top beams of the walls.

I kinda skipped over the roof beams in the last episode. The roof is not flat but rather on diagonals and as a result to fit well on the flat beams, need to be notched. The big trick here is: Make it out of cardboard first, and then trace the cardboard cutout onto a 2x4. Its that simple. Here is a bunch of pictures of that. The thing that I did that was a bit funny is that the side walls the top piece diagonal use the flat side of the 2x4's, while the other beams are situated so that that the 2x4 are turned the long way, ie, the 4" are the tall way. It made more sense on the end ones to attach them the flat way on the sides when they were the top of the wall, These diagonals don't have to be as strong as the ones in the middle because the walls have posts supporting the diagonal beam, whereas the inner diagonals have to bridge as much as the 6 foot depth from the back wall to the top front wall. What I did was shorten the top front wall and the back wall by one thickness of 2x4 (aka, 1.75 inches.) This way when I placed the other diagonals on top of beam of the walls they came up level with the walls top beam.

Getting the walls up was pretty time consuming, but very easy. Its basically just a deck with with no gaps, and you just go back and forth from the ground up. The only issue is you want to cut the lengths the boards so they line up with the posts. Now the posts are the short side of the 2x4, aka, 1.75". this is pretty small considering you need to have 2 boards meet at that spot. To give myself more leeway than the 1.75/2, I put a 1x6 vertically to give a wider area to tack the sideways planking to. See the pics.

The back wall was where I started as it was the most simple wall. Rectangular, and with only 1 cutout. It was a great way to get used to the process. The two side walls added the diagonals, and one doorway, Now the top front wall was tricky but also in the air, so I had to be real careful, crawling around. Ladders are dangerous.

I didn't like working on ladders. they are too easy to fall off of and topple. It occurred to me was if I made the loft, I could then stand on it and put the roof on from there. Easy peasey!! If you remember, I have 3'x8' pallets. They are going to be perfect here. 2 of them will be 6'x8' aka a queen size bed. We'll put up 2x6 beams up with full posts on the inside of the cabin to sit on. There will be one weak corner as shown in the pictures. I doubled up the end of the 2x6 to make a 4x6x1 end, bolting them together and then putting in big lag bolts (5 of them) into the other 2x6 into the 6x6 end. Its one corner of the loft, and nobody is going to be standing up there (its only 3.5' tall at its tallest,) so I'm pretty sure it will hold.

The big issue was how to hold the second beam in place while I put the lag bolts into it. I used the ladder to rest the beam on. There was an issue though. Please review the pictures carefully, do not make my mistake.

Literally just throw the pallets up there, and a couple of screws to keep them from shifting.

I picked up this snow fence for $40 for 100 ft. To hold the wood slats, there is heavy duty wire and with the slats going one way, and the wire going the other, I ended up with a very solid support for the vinyl-aluminum sheets. I just cut the sections to the right length and tacked them down to the beams I also used some single slats to bridge between the sections.

The 24" vinyl roll was cut into 12' sections and laid across, starting from the bottom up. I overlapped them by about 6". as I went up. The screws has washers built in, and they were screwed in under the overlap. the bottom and top edge were folded over to make a solid drip line. The little triangle where the roof meets the wall was stuffed with shipping styrofoam- the kind that pool noodles are made of. I also cut the 24" roll into 3 strips the long way 8" wide. I made straps out of them and ran them the other way to "tie down" the roof just in case. Those straps were tacked down on the walls. which should be able to hold down the roof even in a good wind. The straps went on each side, and one down the middle.

Its the end of November now, well into the 20's at night, so we'll check on things over the winter, but for now Its time for some hot chocolate. I won't keep you in suspense: Over the winter everything remained solid, the deck level, and even without windows and doors, the inside stayed pretty dry. In the spring all I had to clean up was one birds nest. We had some 50mph gales ripping through the valley too, and not a ripple or screw pull on the roof. Until the spring then!