We've decided to wait on putting the tin around the skylight until we're forecast to have some sustained warm weather, but otherwise the homemade storage building is under roof and enclosed to the same level as the pre-made buildings you can buy at Lowes.  Of course, we've still got a lot of work to do --- painting the exterior,  adding gutters, sealing cracks, adding insulation, throwing some linoleum on the floor, and finishing the interior walls.  But I thought now would be a good time to crunch the numbers and see whether it was smart to build the structure ourselves rather than buying one pre-made.

Our building is 8 feet by 20 feet (with the last four feet on the long side being a raised loft.)  The total cost in supplies has been $1,063.39, or $6.65 per square foot. We could have gotten a metal shed from Home Depot for a similar price per square foot, but it would have only been six feet tall (which would have bumped Mark's head!)  A similar sized wooden shed on the lot at Lowes (with more adequate head room) costs three times as much, is constructed out of two by twos instead of two by fours, and only has one small window.  I think we got a good deal --- plus we learned an awful lot about building in the process!

This post is part of our Building a Storage Building from Scratch series.  Read all of the entries: Part 1: Foundation Foundation leveling Laying the groundwork Cedar post foundation experiment Foundation progress How long will a cedar post last? Cedar post foundation update Part 2: Floor Floor joists Home made storage building floor Part 3: Walls and scavenging lumber Homemade storage building window wall Raising the first two walls Raising another wall Scavenging lumber 01-01-10 level Nail deletion on scavenged lumber Snags in the building process Measuring diagonals Another wall section Miter saw measurements Part 4: Adding the loft A second chance at floor building Loft walls Last loft wall Chipmunk builders in love video Part 5: The roof Adding a header Roof rafters Advantages and disadvantages of scavenging lumber Modified bracket closeup Roofmate Homemade storage building tin roof What I learned on the roof Summing it up: Intentionally underbuilding How much does it cost to make a storage building?

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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