Here it is, in all it's glory, before I leveled it. As I found out later, the decorative surround on the roof concealed finger-sized holes in all four corners (left there by the builders!), which let in water, and I had a lot of water damage to repair.
An example of the water damage- lots of rot in the sills (the supports for the walls). The first owner had put a faucet inside it, and a drain- and simply had the drain running out under the building-which was tightly skirted! The floor was in bad shape- the first thing I did was tear out the old floor (with my wife's help).
I build new skids out of scrap material (nailed and glued shorter pieces into 24' long skids), then slid them under and secured them to the joists with screws, using pocket holes for a stronger joint. I tried to get around it, but eventually decided to replace the sill all around with new, pressure treated lumber. Here I've got the wall propped up for this purpose. This was pretty easy- I simply screwed a 2'x board to the wall, jacked the wall up with a couple of small floor jacks, then placed my propping boards (they are bearing on the new skid- if you look closely, you can see that I also put 2'x4' reinforcements above the skid and between the joists- again using pocket holes. This took some time, but is very, very strong).
Instead of nailing into end grain from the outside, which is a weak joint, I drilled four pocket holes in each end of every joist (that's what's going on in the above pic), and attached them to the new sill with four 2 1/2" pocket hole screws. This is orders of magnitude stronger than nailing, plus it leaves no outside holes for water to get in. To illustrate the holding strength of these screws- one of the end sills was badly bowed along it's length- about three inches out. My wife was helping me- I had attached one end with four screws, and she was holding the bowed board up for me. When I ran the first screw in on the loose end, it pulled the entire 12 foot board straight so fast, that it pulled it right out of her hands!
Here's the new sills- a big improvement! Later, I inserted aluminum flashing (that I got cheap at an auction :) I've still got a lot of the stuff, and it's pretty useful for a variety of things.
So, next I needed to replace the floor with new plywood. This would require 12 sheets of plywood, which could get expensive at retail. As it happened, there was another auction about this time for the items left behind when a church moved into a bigger building. Among these items was a large stage, built of 2x4's and 3/4" plywood. I got it for fifteen dollars, and it took me two trips to get it all home, as I was unable to dissasemble it at the church. Above is my trailer, full of this material.
All of the plywood was covered in carpet, which had been thouroughly glued down. This was a huge pain to get off! The most effective method I found was to stand it on end, attached an old weight bar to the carpet with clamps, then hang the heaviest stuff I could find off it. It took most of a week, but I finally managed to get it all apart. This still left the glue residue, which was easy to deal with- I simply turned the sheets over and used the virgin bottom surface.
Here's the new sills- a big improvement! Later, I inserted aluminum flashing (that I got cheap at an auction :) I've still got a lot of the stuff, and it's pretty useful for a variety of things.
So, next I needed to replace the floor with new plywood. This would require 12 sheets of plywood, which could get expensive at retail. As it happened, there was another auction about this time for the items left behind when a church moved into a bigger building. Among these items was a large stage, built of 2x4's and 3/4" plywood. I got it for fifteen dollars, and it took me two trips to get it all home, as I was unable to dissasemble it at the church. Above is my trailer, full of this material.
All of the plywood was covered in carpet, which had been thouroughly glued down. This was a huge pain to get off! The most effective method I found was to stand it on end, attached an old weight bar to the carpet with clamps, then hang the heaviest stuff I could find off it. It took most of a week, but I finally managed to get it all apart. This still left the glue residue, which was easy to deal with- I simply turned the sheets over and used the virgin bottom surface. The 2x4 material also came in handy- I used quite a bit of it in building the new skids, and more of it in repairing and replacing rotted wall material.
More to come on the shop later!
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