Building the Foundation for a DIY Storage Shed

I never considered building a storage shed before. I always thought that if we kept the clutter down, we could live without one. On the other hand, I’ve never liked storing a bunch of landscaping tools in the garage. They look ugly and take a lot of space, In my opinion, there’s no easy way to store them so they look nice and organized in there.

What we have been doing until now is storing all the shovels, rakes and other small landscaping tools in one of our Kobalt tall cabinets. However, we still have a lawn mower and a wheelbarrow taking a lot of space. We need to take them out of there!

In agreement with what I said above, and because (in case you don’t know it yet) we love working on projects, we never considered getting one of those huge storage sheds they sell at Home Depot, Lowes and other stores. We are building our own!

As of right now, we have only completed this phase of the project. I figured that if I posted this phase on the blog, it will force me to keep going, continue working and get it done! We have been way too busy with other things lately, and although we have worked on some smaller projects, we have not had the discipline to work on other bigger ones that we have in mind or to write the blog posts for the ones we have completed so far. We’re hoping to change that soon!

BUILDING THE FOUNDATION FOR A DIY STORAGE SHED

This foundation is kind of simple, it didn’t take a lot of time or materials to build. It required a bit more physical work than other projects, but nothing crazy. As far as the materials, we used:

• Quikrete Concrete Mix for the Pad
• Metal Anchors
• Threaded Rods
• Quikrete Mason Mix to set the blocks
• Concrete Blocks
• Hammer Drill and Drill Bits
• Hand Tools, Level
• Wheelbarrow to mix the concrete

STEP 1: POUR A CONCRETE PAD THE SIZE OF THE NEW SHED

To tell you the truth, we didn’t pour this concrete pad.

We had a landscaping company do it for us when they came to build a concrete patio in our backyard. The pad is roughly 48” x 110”. Kind of small for storage shed standards, but more than enough for us to store the lawnmower, wheelbarrow, table saw, shovels, rakes, and other small landscaping tools.

STEP 2: DRILL A FEW HOLES TO INSERT METAL ANCHORS

Once the concrete is dry, a few days later I would say, drill a few holes to insert the metal anchors.

Our anchors required a ½” hole. To make the job easier, I used two different drill bits to do this. A ¼” concrete drill bit to drill the holes and then a ½” one to open them to the right size.

 

 

After drilling all the holes, we went ahead and inserted the metal anchors.

 

STEP 3: SCREW IN THE THREADED RODS

All you have to do to complete this step is screw in and tighten the threaded rods in the metal anchors.

 

 

If you are still wondering why we are using the anchors and the metal rods, it is because we are building a “stem wall” with the concrete blocks. The anchors and the metal rods will be to fasten the sill plate and walls to the “stem wall”.

The main reason why we are doing this is because, as you can see in the pictures, the shed will be built against one of the exterior walls of the house (it will not be attached to it because that would require building a “real” foundation) and we want it to look as much like it is part of the house as possible.

If we framed the walls all the way to the concrete pad, then we would have to install siding all the way to the ground, which would look weird in our opinion.

STEP 4: GET THE BLOCK SETTING MORTAR READY AND SET THE BLOCKS

With the anchors and threaded rods in place, it was just a matter of mixing up the mortar to set the blocks. We had never set blocks before, but considering the complexity, or lack thereof, of the job, I can say that it was very easy. We did check them with a level and made sure that the tops were aligned.

 

And that’s it, we are now ready to frame the shed!

 

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