Almost as soon as we put all the firewood into my new 'plastic' wood shed the walls started to bow and the connectors came undone. I made some initial repairs to try and keep the shed together but this past year it has become obvious that something had to be done about the condition of the wood shed.
The first problem was that as the walls distended the roof panels in the center kept sliding down so that rain and leaves came in through the hole in the roof. This spring I used some metal bands to fasten the roof panels in place. It was while making those repairs that I realized that the back wall was about to fall off into the neighbors back yard.
 |
| Hard to see but the back wall is detached from the corner of the shed |
With my field trial season winding down I decided to take two days vacation this week and empty the wood shed and make the needed repairs. First order of business was to remove all the wood from the shed so we could work on all the walls and corners at once.
 |
| Kevin wheeling the last of the wood from the shed |
Working with Kevin we had the shed emptied and cleaned in about 3 hours which was a lot less time than I had scheduled. Then I had to decide how to repair the shed. Initially I had thought about building a frame inside the shed to hold all the wood away from the walls of the shed but there was a big problem of how to put the corners together inside the existing shed. Sort of like constructing a ship in a bottle.
 |
| Braces and back panel in place |
In the end I decided to attach two studs between the east and west walls and attach a piece of plywood to the studs to reduce the pressure on the back wall. First we attached metal braces to the back wall panels and to all four corners of the shed. Then we screwed the studs in place and attached the plywood.
 |
| Note the metal braces in the corners |
Then to clear out some more junk that has been collecting on my back patio we screwed the leftover pieces of luan plywood we used to repair the bathroom floor at the apartment to the bottom of the wood shed. Then it was time to put the wood back in.
 |
| Nearly finished. Just some small stuff to put in |
This time, since there was only Kevin and I, it was easier to supervise how the wood went back in. By stacking it perpendicular to the walls we kept the pressure off the corners and were able to get the wood arranged in good order. It will also be easier to remove when I want to build a fire.
 |
| It took about twice as long to put the wood back in the shed as it did to remove it |
In the end I took Kevin's advise and discarded some of the wood that was probably not going to get burned. We threw out most of the construction waste and the shingles that were in the original wood pile. We also got rid of much of the very small twigs and branches. We were also able to get a fair amount of the wood under the back stairs into the shed.
There is about a 20 years supply of wood in the shed now that the county has implimented burning restrictions. But it is nice to know we have the wood if something were to happen and we had to rely on the wood stove for an extended period of time. Hopefully these repairs will fix the problem.
 |
| All cleaned up and back to normal |
