Restoring My First Home Part 1 - Bailey Line Life #19

In this video I want to share with you a kind of remedial carpentry job I'm doing back in

1986 we just bought the property here it was 23 no buildings on it I was living in a leaking

tent I really needed a place to stay any kind of a place at all and so I built myself the shed

that's what we call it it's a 10 by 20 foot building my wife and I lived in there three

seasons of the year until 1991 until the house was ready to move into. So I like the place. I like the old shed. The thing is it was

built really badly from the start. It was my first building and I didn't have very many tools

I didn't have very much money. I had less experience and living in that tent, I just wanted to

get in someplace quickly. So I built this shed the best I could and it's pretty bad and here we are

30-something years later and I'm working to preserve it. I'm trying to fix some problems. I want to show you

the problems and the way I'm fixing them and maybe you can learn something and apply it to fixing up

old buildings at your place. This is the shed. I've already started on the remedial work

And essentially I'm doing several things. I'm doing my best to stabilize this with the best

kind of foundation I can put under it at this stage. The only siding on this before was some

one by six wood siding and down at the bottom on one side in particular it was rotting quite badly

whole sections were gone the rest of the siding was kind of thin so I'm I'm beefing up the solidity

of the outside walls I'm going to be I'm doing that actually with this with this plywood I'll

explain more about that later and ultimately on top between corner boards and around window

trim I'm going to be putting some cedar shingles So I want this thing to last a long time and I want it to, but I want it to look good too

Look as good as it can. This is really kind of a homely shape even to begin with

I would never build a building with a shallow roof slope and the proportions of walls I have here

But I guess this is really just an exercise in trying to make a silk purse out of a souse ear, an old sowsier too

One of the fundamental problems with the shed was that we didn't build it with any sort of a frost-proof foundation

frost-proof foundation. Now where we live, frost penetration, two, three, four feet. Every winter

is normal and the soil here is heavy so it moves and that's been a problem. That's one of the

reasons why this shed has sagged and twisted because we just, we just laid down some, some limestone

rocks on the crown, a dug in a tiny little bit, but we laid them in and then we built the floor

frame on top of that. So I didn't want to do any other fixing up work until I did my best to create a more stable footing because this

whole shed rests on beams and floor joists that I made from poplar logs that I cut in the forest So poplar is not very rot resistant at all

And I wanted to get the shed to sit on something other than those rocks that are sitting underneath the flint of the frame

And that's what you see going on here now. This is some concrete that you see here

And there was some forming lumber in here. forming lumber in here. So what I did was I I set down some forming lumber and then I dug out the area as much as I could all along the length of the shed. It's still resting on some stones. But where I could, I wanted to get underneath and poured this concrete and used a concrete vibrator to have it flow underneath as much as possible. So this concrete is is kind of under that poplar beam I was telling you about. Now

I don't really think that's going to last a long time. So what I did was this plywood that's on the outside, this is three-quarter-inch plywood

and it's pressure-treated plywood, and it's screwed to the wall frame. So what I'm going for here is to make this shed capable of resting on its skin only

Because this is pressure-treated plywood, so it should last pretty well. There's also going to be a board here along the bottom

I'll show you what that looks like on the front of the shed

That's going to define the bottom edge of the shingles where they stop

And that particular board is pressure-treated, but the kind used for a pressure-treated wood foundation

So it never, ever rots, no matter how long it's in contact with the soil

It's just a permanent wood foundation kind of material. So that's also going to be bearing on this concrete here

That's why I had it stick out further. I'm going to be using some PL premium construction adhesive to bond it to the plywood

and also screws, of course, and things. Even if the floor frame starts to rot away, the shed's still going to be as stable as it can be

Now, granted, this concrete's not below the frost line. It's almost certainly going to crack

But I figure if the shed has stayed here more or less stable for 30 years based on just some limestone rocks

taken from the forest and put on the ground, then this is probably

going to work quite a bit better. And also to give this concrete every opportunity I could to work properly

I put in some polyester fibers. So this greatly reinforces the strength of the concrete

helps it to hold together. And as I said, I used a concrete vibrator to consolidate it and get it to

flow in and do a good job. So that's thing number one, some kind of stable foundation

Another thing I'm doing here is installing these corner boards. These are pressure treated. Just

regular pressure treated. I know the bottom's down at the end, but I think it's going to last okay

As I mentioned before, cedar shingles will be installed on the walls

budding up against the corner board here There going to be a similar trim around the door and around the windows Now the windows already had to trim on and the trim is thicker than the three inch plywood

So it sticks out proud of the plywood, but it's not really an issue because I'm going to go over here with

with some more wood like that inch and a half pressure treated a little bit wider

Now there's going to be a gap between the bottom of that and the plywood, but that's okay

there's going to be a rain screen in here too, something that allows water to drain down and out of the wall

if it gets past the shingles. So all of that taken together means that the thickness of shingles and the rain screen is about this much

It's almost an inch because we did it at my place. It's almost an inch, exactly. So that's going to be covering up this gap

So there's no problem. You know, this kind of a project requires a very different sort of thinking than regular from scratch carpentry

because when you're doing a new building, you want to do everything you can as well as you can

And if you do that successfully, errors don't add up. You just have a nice crisp building that could last forever

With something like this, you're always dealing with compromises. It's constant compromises

I think a lot of people would have knocked this building down. Sentimental value and also the fact that it's really doing a good job for us

I mean, the roof is excellent. I replace the shingles. A couple years ago, this shed is a regular part of our life

So I think it's worth fixing. And that's what we're going to do. But I want to tell you something now about a mistake that I made way back in 86 that's still haunting me now

I don't suppose anybody makes it very far through life before realizing that sometimes little mistakes, little misunderstandings can have long-term consequences

And that's what's going on here. When I built this shed, as I said, 23 years old, never built anything substantial before

I didn't realize that you use a level to make walls plum

I mean, I had built plenty of furniture before this, and when I want to make something square, I use a square

So I had the floor built, and I used my carpenter's square while I was single-handedly

trying to hold the wall up and get it plum and lock it in position

But of course, there's two problems with that. I mean, I'm just one guy

So I'm not going to get it very accurate. And even if it was accurate, the floor might not be perfectly level

And also, a little bit of error on a two-foot level makes a big difference on an eight-foot wall

So just to clarify, you're telling us that you plumbed the wall frame with a square

That's right. That's what I did, because I didn't know any better. And so I'm kind of proud of myself, not really noticing that, well, not really noticing

way out of square. My old neighbor, Ivan Bailey, comes over. He was in his 70s at the time

And he walks over and looks at the building and he says, whoa, that looks really out of plum

Can I have your level And well I had I owned a level I used it to level up the floor And as soon as he said can I have your level I thought to myself ah that a much better way to plumb a wall than a square

And so he put it on, and sure enough, it was out of whack. But I was far enough along. I'd already put on the braces and, you know, inside to stabilize the frame

So basically, I locked it in the unplum position. And once I knew it was unplum, it was really bugging me

I look at it many times a day. What should I do? Should I knock it down

Should I start again? I kicking myself. I live with it. And those sort of regrets, they wear off after a while

But anyway, in the interest of full disclosure, this is how out of plum it is

So this is a four-foot level. And when I get this thing, plum

plum there. The bubble's plum. Look at how far off that wall is on a four-foot

four foot. Like, what is that? That's almost two and a half inch. I'm having trouble holding the camera

steady. It's so appalling. Well, it is appalling, but you know, it doesn't move. It's solid. As I said

I have diagonal braces inside. I've certainly locked it in the position now when I'm applying all this

plywood. And, you know, that's just the way the lanky old shed is. It's just crooked. It's got

character. It does have character. In the same way that an arthritic old man has character

Right. Okay. We'll go with that. We'll go with that. We'll go that but so what I'm going to do and I'm going to show you this in a subsequent video

is I'm going to do the same thing I did with the siding because when Ivan came over the frame

was locked and solid but I hadn't put on the siding yet and he said well you know we should at least

make the siding level so the courses of shingles will be level and you know the door's going to

have to be a little out of whack because the door opening is out of whack I don't want I could plum that but I don't want to have super plum and square door opening right next to some

won't be kind of going to highlight it more than anything I think so let's see if we can actually

visually see this on camera when I back up here because you can tell in real life

which we've always sort of had a little laugh at at your expense but it doesn't look super

obvious on camera but kind of I mean well I'm seeing it with

these grids on the screen right now for filming purposes, which the audience, of course, won't see

But it kind of just has that backwoods, old building, lots of character sort of feel

Yeah, I wish it was more perfect, but it's not. I'm going to go with it, make the best of it, see what I can do

Very wise. So thanks for joining me this week. Come back and see in future videos what this shed looks like

like when it actually looks pretty good. If you like the video, give me a thumbs up, hit the

notifications bell, subscribe, and check out the description box because it's got my website address

in it and I'd love to have you out for a visit