Almost a week ago I took delivery of what seems like enough wood to build a small house. With the current tiny house craze it probably is …. but that’s a story for another day. This is rough-cut lumber from a local sawyer so it is still very green. I haven’t measured the moisture yet but it has to be very high. In Northwest Florida, during the summer – especially July and August, it is extremely humid with daily temperatures in the upper eighties to lower/mid-nineties. Not only that it has been raining almost every day for what seems like weeks on end. In the last week alone we have had over eight inches of rain. This means that it will dry very slowly unfortunately. I hope that it is ready for use (down to 12%-15% moisture) by mid-October but that might be optimistic.
We are almost done stacking and stickering that wood. Once that is done I can relax a little for the rest of the summer. The only thing left is to find a source for my metalwork for the shed. Once the moisture levels in the wood drops I will be planing the wood as we want this shed to look special. Planing it will provide a much more uniform and clean look as well as provide a better surface for paint.
Once I finish this project I’ll be releasing the plans for the shed for free. And this isn’t a back-of-the-napkin set of drawings. I created the initial drawings (on graph paper – not a napkin!) and then had them professionally done in a CAD program with proper engineering sheets produced. Any needed changes will be updated after I complete this shed and then you will be free to download those plan!
I believe that a shed of this size is a great introduction to post-and-beam building. Want to build your own home and save up to 50 percent off retail? Take the time to build a project like this first. You will learn SO much. And virtually everything you learn can be directly transferred to building your own home. A shed of this size makes a great storage unit. Maybe a “she shed” or a “man cave”. And who wouldn’t want a post and beam shed for their woodworking shop?