Shed Floored

I took a break from all the interior stuff on NewOldHouse and got after the shed floor this past week. Today's brief post covers that.

Mid-Afternoon Update: my father's memorial is this Saturday (21-January) and the longer obituary was finally posted by the funeral home (here) this morning.

Holey Floor

finished floor

I've mentioned that the NewOldHouse came with a pair of chicken shacks. The one closer to the house was marked for storing tools and car parts until we can build a shop. The other one has been marked for gardening stuff, but it is in far worse shape. The garden shed has been left siting while I prep the tool shed for use. When I shot the interior of the house, I shot in the interior of the shed. While I was preparing for paint and afterwards I realized just how bad the front-most section of flooring was. I figured I could cut out the bad section and jam in some new wood.... I could replace the whole floor... or I could do both. I went with both.

Parts

We had to go to Home Depot for some other home repair stuff, so I got 3 pieces of treated 15/32" plywood (4 foot by 8 foot). These ran for about $60 each. I had the lumber guy trim off 7 inches off the long end, bringing it to 89". This is the distance between the base plates for the side exterior walls. Front-to-back, I needed to shave 7 inches too, but the lumber guy would not cut a couple inches off each board and I failed to get one shortened. So, with 3 pieces of 48" by 89" plywood, and the 48" by 7" cut-off bits we prepared for the floor work by setting the sheets inside the shed on an especially wet and windy winter afternoon.

Patch It Up

fixin a hole

There was an actual hole in the floor close to the door, so with a framing hammer I got whacking around the hole until I couldn't easily knock off dead floor. Then, I measured off 13.5" from the door and then 47.5" across to create a neat hole to patch. I cut the hole with a hand saw and then cleared 1/2" of the rotten wood under the baseplate. I still had to cut a small section out of the section of new material that was against the door, but the bits fit. To support them from below, I pulled a 2x4 from the scrap pile and set it into the hole, centered under what would be the thin gap between the patch boards. I attached it from above, with 1.5" long screws into the base plate and then into the solid flooring at the doorway. I had to section that 2x4 first so it would fit the hole and I used the cut-off along the inner edge to create a lip to set the inner patch board upon. Once solidly attached, I screwed the patch pieces in.

Floored

With the hole patched, I marked and drilled the hole for the off-door floor latch and then shifted to installing the full sheets. First, I swept the floor of the shed. I picked the one that looked nicest and set it closest to the doorway. With more 1.5" screws, I set the new material into place, held it down with my knee and set screws through. I measured off 16" spaces and continued until the first sheet was down. I repeated this process for the middle sheet, again, picking the next-nicest sheet. The last sheet needed to be trimmed 7", down to 41". I did this again with a handsaw. I would have used a powersaw at this point, but I lacked clamps, and did not want to mess it up. Once the panel was shortened, I marked where the center 2x4 in the rear wall was by setting the panel in place and drawing with a pencil. I marked the depth and then cut the rectangle out again with that handsaw. The panel fit pretty perfectly, and after another round with the power drill and 1.5" screws, there is a new floor in the toolshed.

back wall

Start to finish, this took me, maybe 6 hours, and a great deal of that was because I used the handsaw, and it was not terribly good. Still, I am very glad it is done and feel comfortable starting to move car parts and my rolling tool cabinets in there.

Thanks, as always, for following along-