Converting an Old Shed

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Got slowed down with this project because of house guests.

Putty time the last couple days. There were some nail holes that went all the way through the siding that left holes when the nails were removed. But, um...no, there were not that many actual holes in the siding. I just couldn't easily tell which little dings were holes and which were just small nicks.
IMG_20230516_135744.jpg

Post-putty, I can now see on the other side that there were like...6 that went all the way through...:oops:

My husband wants to do the roof next. I think before that I may do a disinfectant spray of some kind to try to nuke any stuff that might have grown in/on water-damaged areas.
 
First bit of good news in a while with this shed: most of the roof wood is actually ok! Not nearly as rotten as I thought. There are two 4x8 panels that need to be replaced and I happen to already have four 4x4 panels which would span the same area, so hopefully those can go up there (it's tough for me to bring back 4x8s and not sure how I'd get them up there). My husband has stripped the old nasty shingles off of most of the roof. It's covered with a tarp for the moment to wait out some rain.

This thing is still a bit frustrating...but...I think I'm going to make the best of it by building a frame for an auto door and putting in there, so siding would need to be removed anyway wherever I put that.
IMG_20230519_170545__01.jpg

I will be using an Omlet horizontal sliding coop door because I've got 2 of them and could repurpose one. However, I think I want to actually mount it facing inwards so it is recessed from the outside, which would give it better protection against snow and ice. An auto door frame for that type of door would be about the width of the area of damaged siding. That approach would also let me have an extra manual pop door on the outside.

An auto+manual door is something I've wanted for a while for situations like a -20F blizzard morning where I don't want the flock coming out at the usual time. The Omlet auto doors operate great in super cold weather, but the control panel becomes hard to use in sub zero temps (the LCD gets reaaaally slow updating pixels so it's hard to tell what setting you've chosen) so it would be easier to just close a manual door the night before rather than trying to put the Omlet door into manual mode.
 
Fun discoveries...the roof panels were put on with like 1 nail here, 1 nail there...and then KABLAM whole lota nails in the most awkward places possible. Also totally random types of nails. And the occasional screw mixed in. It took the whole afternoon and both my husband and me prying to remove just one, extremely rotten panel. The other one with a rotten patch that needs to be removed is not so rotten elsewhere...so that one will no doubt be even harder to remove. The floor boards were put on with enormous, threaded nails, so prying those off is going to be even more fun than the roof panels.
 
My husband said he could still smell ancient rodent stink in the shed despite being very well aired out with all surfaces brushed and swept. So, I sprayed eucalyptus odoban yesterday and then today pressure washed all interior surfaces. No more smell.

I have materials set to be delivered in a couple days for the roof & siding fixes and to finish the main parts of the interior. Still have to build...
  • Vent covers on the openings along the high wall. Doesn't look like I can easily install anything heavy so it will have to be pretty minimal.
  • inserts to block up the holes between the rafters with HWC...16 segments in total. It will be annoying to make that many, but the spaces are too awkward to just try to screw/staple/etc. HWC in directly and have it be secure, so I need something in a hard frame I can just slide in and anchor with a few screws.
  • a regular-sized access door from the left (there's a nasty board I need to pull off to reveal that hole when it's time to install a proper door)
  • a frame for the auto-door at the back
  • some better designed big double doors.

Post pressure-wash with portion of bad siding removed from the back. The pressure wash knocked a ton of debris out of the floor boards in particular.
IMG_20230526_173728.jpg


Rare view of the hidden world under the shed...
IMG_20230526_173745.jpg


This is frustrating. This is near the back left corner; thought it could be sealed up more easily. The beams are somehow not lined up properly. Fixing that would be way beyond what I can do easily with this structure so I have to work with it. Not sure if I should just do a combination of steel wool and foam (since this will get hidden under OSB later) or if I should actually put some wood bits in there.
IMG_20230526_173824.jpg


Meanwhile...we are not pleased that we don't get to forage outside when bits of old shed roof are being thrown about.
IMG_20230521_154124__01s.jpg
 
DonyaQuick said:
There is one on the other side. Going to be doing curved plastic covers over the flush side openings as I've used on the openings of a smaller coop since all other options explored (windows, extending rafters, etc) ended up being problematic for some reason or other.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it's not easy.
See my coop page on how I did mine.
 
Well, this just figures doesn't it...those plastic cover things are both not in stock in sufficient quantities in the size I want locally, I don't trust having them shipped in case they get cracked...and they seem to have doubled in price since I saw them before. They must have been on sale earlier in the year.

So, I got supplies to do something like this instead. The angles and things aren't exactly as it will be in practice, but my plan is to basically use a combination of small wood bits (small enough snow weight will not be a concern) and flashing to just add a roughly 45-degree angle to where the main opening is while keeping the overall dimensions of the opening nearly the same.
roof_plan.png
 

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