We bought a house late last year. It has a tiny garage. It also has a big "shed" that the wife claimed. The deal was we would build a metal building early this year to serve as garage space and my project area, and she would park the volt in the small garage, and I would finish out the shed for her as a craft space/dance studio.
A few months pass and its 2021, time to get the going. Everything is so high all my friends building metal building are paying double their estimate from late last year. Im too cheap to spend that much and 6 months later watch the market stabilize and I overpaid by 100%.
So I turned my attention to the sheshed.
I forgot to take pictures so I just have the outside before for now. It has a second story over about half of the shed,with some old couches up there. The PO had an extension ladder held in place with some wood to get up there. It also has a bunch of shelving and work space. It is unfinished just bare studs, and a plywood floor. Upon inspection I knew it would need some work but I wasnt too worried about it.
Plan is to finish it out, maybe insulate it but with the ceiling it'd be a bunch of work for not much gain, vynil "wood floor",drywall and paint it, a window unit built into the back wall, some cabinets for storage, some countertops for work space, a movable island, and actual staircase for the upstairs.
When we bought the place there was a bunch of lumber scraps and junk piled up in the corner, so I took to cleaning it out to get a better idea on what was needed. Once I cleaned it out, it was apparent it would need more work than I originally thought. The back left corner was about 6 inches lower than the rest of the building and it happend over a span of a foot. The plywood was soft and there was almost no structure to the floor in that corner. I started tearing up the plywood to get a better look and it was termite damage. The floor joists, studs and bottom plate were all eaten.
I jacked the back corner up to about the right spot and put some blocks under it for support in a few places and went to work. I just kept finding more and more damage, especially below about 3 feet. Everything was eaten and essentially the rest of the building was just hanging this corner in place.
I had a pest guy come out and he said its all old damage and found no termites currently in it.
So now its time to get to work. I had originally hoped I wouldnt have to lift the upper structure, but that wasnt the case, so much structure was eaten and weakened then smashed from the weight, I had to get the weight off the back wall. So I used my floor jack to jack the building up one spot at a time then put a stud under it for support. Once I had the back wall up a few inches I cut out the rotted joists. I originally planned on replacing the studs but some had a little good wood left so I decided to just put studs in right next to the old ones. I also found a little damage in the top plate. So i would put new wood in there below the old one and above the stud, then tie it in with a 2x6 to the board above the top plate.
Here it is after getting the back wall up and cutting the joists out.
I went ahead and positioned the footer(?) made a plywood spacer (the plywood floor goes over the frame and under the bottom plate) and put a bottom plate in place. Then I put a few joists in to see how they lined up. I didnt want to tear out the rest of the floor so I just attached the new joists to the good wood on the old ones.
You can see I also got a few new studs in working around my supports. After that I slowly pulled out the loose supports and continued to put new studs in.
At this point the wall itself actually had some structure to it, so I felt more comfortable being able to move and manipulate the wall the put the rest of the joists in.
Thats where I left it last weekend.