Building a Plastic Shed Day 1: Leveling the Ground

It’s that time of year again. Just as the snow melts away in Rochester, NY I get the itch to get outside and start some yard-related project. Last year it was skirting my deck. This year I need to build a place for this to live:

Craftsman YS 4500 Yard Tractor, I bought to ‘manicure the grounds’

Knowing that I won’t be able to store it and my 2 cars in the garage, I decided to build a shed. I have been eyeballing the Lifetime LTM 60005 shed at my local BJ’s since last year. I liked that it was a center-entry shed that I could butt up against the back of my garage.

BJ’s carries these in stock right now for $999

Scoping out the Site
I wanted to make sure that this shed was going to suit my needs. It needed to fit my tractor, a snow blower, a push mower, all of their gas cans, as well as all of my yard tools. So, I did a quick scale drawing of my garage and the potential shed in Visio. I measured all of my lawn equipment and did scale representations of them as well. Then I could move around all of the pieces and move potential sheds in relation to my garage without breaking my back, or buying something that would ultimately be too small.

Visio drawing of shed in relationship to my garage (click for expanded view)

I did shop around a bit more just to be sure that this shed was ‘the right one’. Even through the mocking of my friend Andy who called my shed choice the “Tupperware Shed”, I just couldn’t pass it up. It’s sturdy, looks good with my house, and is a heck of a lot cheaper than the wood and shingle structures that professionals build on site. Be prepared if you do buy something like this at your local warehouse club, it weighs a ton! It took 3 grown men to shove the two 8′ boxes into the back of my SUV. And once I got it home it took 3 of us to remove it from the truck and put it in my garage.

Here’s the before photo of where the shed will go

Preparing a Level Surface
There are many ways to create a level surface to build a shed on. You can have a cement pad poured, but this would require me to call professionals or do a ton of back-breaking forming, mixing, and troweling. You can build a wooden platform, like building a deck on the ground. My issue with this approach is complexity, cost, and another potential haven for critters. I decided to choose the easiest DIY operation - stone. I started by going to my local Mr 2nd and buying ‘drainage stone’. It was $3.33 per bag and I needed about 45 bags for an 8′ x 10′ pad that’s about 4″ deep. Well, I poured it all on the ground and leveled it out only to find that the edges kept spilling outward. Yes, you need a barrier to stop the stone from going everywhere.

The solution for me was to buy some 4×4 pressure treated lumber and make a simple frame on the ground to contain the stone. I squared up the timbers, then used 6″ galvanized spikes to tie them together. After I leveled the frame by packing dirt underneath the low spots, I then drove 18″ long by 1/2″ diameter steel rebar through the timbers into the ground to anchor them.

Drill holes for the rebar with 5/8″ spade drill bit

Pound in the rebar with a maul. It goes in quite easily

After providing a good frame for my stone, I then took a 12 ‘ 4×4 with my trusty assistant and screeded the stone until it was level. This is done by laying the long board onto the wooden frame at either end and shifting the board back and forth to move the stone underneath it. After this was complete, I tested the plastic floor on the new platform. Everything felt pretty solid, although there’s a little bit of squish underfoot. I’m going to go buy a few bags of pea gravel to put on top of my coarse drainage stone. When I work in the pea gravel, it should make the surface just a little more solid.

With the site prepared, we will move on to building the shed. We have already spent about 6 hours putting together many of the pieces that will be used in the shed’s construction, like the trusses, gables, door hardware, and skylights. When we do start building the walls and roof, this pre-work should make the actual building go much faster. I’ll be sure to take some pictures and tell you how it goes.