We have a post and beam woodshed attached kitty-corner to the house, and then a lean-to shed on the end. Half our firewood goes in one, and half in the other. We burn out of the lean-to first, as the snow blows in and the other wood is just a little closer for the later part of winter. The roof and posts on the lean-to were at end of life, so we did a rebuild.
I didn't get pics of the demolition. I backed an old army trailer in under, and demo'ed right into it. It had an endwall, too, but it is gone in these pics.
The house was built in 1797, and there was a lot of archeological finds as we removed the soil. Nothing of value. Wire, nails, pottery shards, glass, etc. We also discovered the post and beam section was at least 6" low on this end. So next order of business was leveling it up a bit. I've got a small laser level just for this sort of thing (note red line, in pic below). About 6" in one direction and 3" in the other. A couple of bottle jacks took care of that.
Next we removed the rest of the top soil, and used the tractor to bring up some sand to help with drainage. I decided to use stone as a base for the posts rather than pouring concrete. The front stone is already set in the pic above (goes two feet below surface). This isn't below frost, but neither is the rest of the shed I'm building onto. The back corner stone is a core from a hole the power company drilled in order to plant a pole in solid ledge - would have liked to have seen them drill and extract this.
As an aside, I'm anchoring the posts to the stone, based on a bad experience. I had a nice cattle shed on skids, 24' x 10', until a freak wind out of the south flipped it up and slammed it onto a stone wall and demolished it. These pics are before I did any demo. The middle pic is the skid frame, and the back wall is flopped down beyond it. Absolutely smashed everything. Fortunately some of the lumber was still usable, and appears shortly.
So the plan was to drill holes for anchor bolts in the corner rocks and bolt on a base that would also keep the wood a bit drier. Masonry drill bit on a portable drill was the wrong tool. Brand new masonry bit on a half inch hammer drill was the wrong tool. But eventually we asked the right friend for the right tool, and it took more time to run the extension cord than it took to drill two 5/8" holes.
I also used metal plates to attach the top of the rafters to a 2x12 lag-bolted to the existing shed. Unfortunately, that meant I couldn't easily reuse my rough sawn rafters from the old cow shed, so another trip to the lumber yard. We also used new roofing since this is in the front yard. I had some help this weekend and we got the 10" and 12" ship lapped pine siding on the end. And my wife promptly grabbed the space! The long stone, above, was discovered while removing the topsoil for this shed. You might be able to see their drill marks. I suspect they had to work a lot harder than I did. Still a little more siding and flashing to do, but the wood can begin moving in once this rain finally stops.
I will add a final pic once it has 4 cord of wood in it, but that won’t be soon due to all the rain that got blown into the sides of my stacks. So that’s all for now. About $700 out of pocket, plus a quart of syrup for use of the big hammer drill.
Nice job. You've given me some inspiration now, I gotta build a lean-to shed roof off my garage to store my tractor and trash cans.
I just may tackle the garage length lean to myself too. Why not? Can always hire someone else to finish it if (when) my back poops out.
