The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Snags in the building process

Framing up a wallI'd be the first one to tell you that our homemade storage building has growing pains.  Although I've read a lot of books and websites, this is the first time I've ever put screw to 2x4, and it shows.

We probably could have the whole thing done by now if we knew what we were doing, but we've still got two walls to raise and the roof to put on before we even start on the interior.  Still, I can feel the building process picking up momentum as we repeat steps we've figured out in the past.

Monday, Mark let me try my hand at framing a wall.  Those square bits that come in the screw boxes make it much easier for a novice like me to drive screws without stripping the heads.

I nearly finished the half wall section I was working on before I ran out of lumber.  Unfortunately, we had to call it quits for the day since we got a flat driving the golf cart through ice to the cars where the rest of the 2x4s are stored.  Mark's teaching me that things happen on a farm --- you just have to roll with it and allow plenty of extra time to get projects done!

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This post is part of our Building a Storage Building from Scratch series.  Read all of the entries:

Part 1: Foundation
Part 2: Floor
Part 3: Walls and scavenging lumber
Part 4: Adding the loft
Part 5: The roof
Summing it up:




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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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My biggest worry about moving to our little farm is my utter lack of construction skills. My fingers can find the keys on a keyboard if I'm drunk, in the dark, and have been spinning around on my head for ten minutes. But my hands don't know WHAT the hell their doing! I am unhandy, in case that hasn't been made clear. :-) But maybe all I need is some practice... And the fact that this is the first time you've screwed together 2x4s makes me feel more confident. If you can do it I can do it right?
Comment by Everett Tue Jan 5 11:19:44 2010
Absolutely! It's fun to learn -- as long as you're not going to get upset if your building isn't 100% perfect on the first try.
Comment by anna Tue Jan 5 13:53:07 2010





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