Build a Foundation for a Shed

My husband and I have been wanting a shed forever & this year we finally got one.

We went back and forth on whether to build our own or just buy one, but in the end we decided to just purchase one because it was cheaper and faster, only because we're "pretend builders" as my son would say.  We would have built one if we had our contractor brother living nearby. ;)

Since we spent a lot of money on an A/C this year, we decided to get a less expensive shed and opted for this Arrow steel shed rather then a wood shed.  We purchased this one at Lowe's and you can find it here.

We wanted to build a strong sturdy foundation for this shed so that it would last a long time.

We decided to put the shed on the side of our house so that it would open up onto our concrete pad in the back yard.  It would have been nice to put it in the back corner of the yard, but since we have lots of snow that wouldn't be convenient for storing our snow blower.

These are our supplies, minus the gravel.

Before we could even begin on the foundation construction we had to cap off sprinklers & run a sprinkler pipe under our concrete pad.  Luckily I've dealt with our sprinklers before, so we were able to do the work on our own.  Don't forget to think about sprinklers before you install a shed.

We used 3 skids (treated 4x4s), 12 blocks & gravel to level the ground.

The ground slopes a little over on this side of the yard, so we had to double up on some of the blocks.

Let me just tell you that leveling is my LEAST favorite thing to do, but very necessary!

It took us one whole day just to get this all level.  Well, mostly because we have a 1 year old who doesn't like us to ignore her all day. :)

Once we were able to level the ground, we build the floor foundation with treated 2x6s.

Thankfully we had an awesome neighbor come over and help us lift this onto the skids.

Before installing the floor boards be sure to square the floor frame.  Shed installation works out much nicer if your floor is squared.  For the floor we used 3/4" untreated plywood.  For steel sheds you need to use the non-treated ply wood for the floor. (Just pretend you don't see my "non straight" fence in the background. We've had it fixed twice.)

This is our shed all complete.  It took us an entire day to install this shed because it has about a million screws, bolts & nuts.  Plus all the holes don't always line up during installation, so we had to drill a few new ones. You definitely need at least two people to install this and we were so fortunate to have a completely wind free day to set this up.  It wouldn't work to set it up on a windy day.

My husband anchored the shed to the foundation with bolts & nuts.  I'm sure the wind, at least in our town, would blow this entire shed away if it wasn't anchored down.

This is the inside with some shelving we added.

I can't wait to get everything out of the garage and into this shed.  It will be so nice to de-junk our garage!

Oh, and here is our little helper.  Well, she thinks she's a big help.

This is the back view.

My husband used a sealant all around the bottom of this shed so that water wouldn't leak in onto the shed floor & he sanded the corners so hopefully our "littles" won't hurt themselves.

Now it's ready for all our junk, or we could just use it as a playhouse like this little one wants to. ;p