So…I am really good at ideas, I am really bad at implementing them. I love the getting started, the planning, the thinking, etc. I find myself struggling with the “hard work” part of getting something off the ground and fledged.
That said, I am in a situation where we need storage and we need it fast, so I am building a shed. For $1000 more I could have had it installed, but I am an engineer. I can build this thing. And the truth is, I love projects that have me working with my hands. I don’t do them enough. So, a shed it is.
To put in a shed, one must first create a level and square (not in shape in the fact that it has 90 degree corners) base. This is time consuming, hard, and frustrating. This is the reason most people hire someone else. This kind of detail work takes patience and requires work that I just typically want to avoid. Hard work means frustration. Hard work means effort. Hard work means time. It is so much easier to blindly scroll social media (and beat myself up about how no one really likes or comments on my posts…another story for another time).
My gate has been falling down for years. My yard is a mass of holes and sinkholes from bad fill. And like most yards it is NOT perfectly level.
But I am determined to build anyway. It will be a fun project. I hope.
At the end of the first day of work…at least 5 hours…What I have are 12 “holes” dug out of the grass and loose topsoil for each of my supports to take the weight of the structure and the stuff I will be putting in it. I managed to get 6 supports in and level.
Each of those concrete posts weighs at least 40 pounds, the block at least 30 and the bags of gravel were 50 lbs too. Digging in the dirt isn’t all that easy either. I learned a lot in day 1 about getting these blocks level.
It only took about 4 hours to get the last 6 blocks level and in place. I won’t say it was easy, I did cry and I did want to quit, I did have a lot of beating myself up because of both of those things. It did require another trip to Lowe’s because I broke 2 concrete blocks and I needed more gravel and sand, but at this point every thing is near to the correct place, and level! But the truth is, that it isn’t over yet. I need to make sure the floor base is in and square.
Here is where the tedious work begins. Making a base is easy, just follow directions. Making it square is much more difficult. It is super easy to make a parallelogram, the wood naturally warps, the nails allow for flex. I can get everything in and measured correctly, but it will still be 2-3 inches off square. Every step requires pausing and remeasuring.
To most of us, things that are “close enough” look square, unless something is obviously tilted an inch or two doesn’t make much of a difference out of 12 feet. However, when you are building a structure, being off square by even an inch is a very big deal. It makes everything else so much harder.
With a base that isn’t square, I will either build a structure square and it will look terrible because the base is off and now things don’t line up. Or I will have to do a lot of extra work to mold and cut everything to make it look square, even though it isn’t. Either way, the fact that I didn’t take the time to put in a solid foundation is going to hurt me in the end.
So, I took the extra couple of hours of hard work and sweat to fine tune the location of the blocks to make sure that the base was square and level.
I am sore today and there is still a lot to do, and I can only hope that my hard work paid off, but I have a foundation I should now be able to build on.
The Om Space 