Creating Stability
This week, we ran into some more foundational issues…the pun here is intended, because of course, the shed doesn’t have a foundation, although now I kind of wish it did. I suppose turning a mere garden shed into a big strong piano workshop was always going to present us with some structural challenges, but it was a bit worse than we originally expected.
Behold, the joist.
There’s a hole in my floor, dear Liza dear Liza…
We had seen what some more minor, cosmetic issues pertaining to the shed having lived on the ground for so many years, but once Jonas was able to get underneath the shed, we found that the endmost joist in the floor was rotting out.
My sister and her friends had this thing they did in college where someone would just say, “be how you feel!” and everyone would have to make an expression that showed what they were feeling about whatever was going on in that moment. Here’s Jonas after I said, “Jonas, be how you feel about this shed right now.”
Be how you feel: “uh, well, mehhh…? But like - it could probably still be ok?”
This felt like a big fix, so I left Jonas to do this one on his own. It wasn’t the time to try and learn all there was to know about shed framing…my clients’ pianos need to be safe and sound in there! All I did was paint the new joist (the same color as the shed trim because that was the only paint we had).
After a long day of troubleshooting and backtracking and uncertainty and anxiety, we felt really good about how the situation was resolved!
new joist! fresh and clean!
Half of the shed was sitting in the dirt, and we knew that we’d need to get some extra framing into the floor, so Jonas jacked it up (DON’T do this without an experienced helper). The jack helped us get the walls and floor of the shed more level so we could add more joists. I learned how to use a sliding miter saw so I could add joists to the walls while Jonas added to the floor.
Look at that pretty new wood!
Yucky exterior corner that has been living in dirt for (probably) its whole life…welcome to the world, little corner buddy.
So this basically added a full day to our work to resolve. In the end, we decided to remove the old joist, paint a pressure treated piece of new joist material, as well as a special cut of the joist material to really just redo everything.
old joist - get on out of here with your rot!
Another perk of having space between the ground and the shed is that Oscar can poke his head in and see how we’re doing, or help us clear sticks and stuff out from under the shed! Here he is next to the most rotten corner:
Let’s get a closer look at that little pitbull (oh yeah, and the rot, may it rest in peace).
