N'Tranced Dream: Business with a Capital B

06:00 Wednesday morning, the alarm went off and I was out of bed like a rocket. Into and out of the shower like a flash (not sure if the water even had a chance to touch me). Cuppa making gadget was then turned on, as was the pooter and the camera found and readied for action for the day. The usual handful of magic pills, supposedly will keep me alive until I'm 113, was thrown down the gullet and washed down with some nice cold OJ. A cuppa was then made - geez those Aldi thingies are great for making the wet black stuff - sooo easy now.

7:30 on the dot the head Shed Technician arrived, as he had arranged, and got straight into setting himself up with all his tools and bibs and bobs for the day.

He double checked with the client, that would be me, of where the plumbing, door and window were to go, just to make sure of it all. So I let him be for a while and went back in to my pooter and coffee.

7:50 the second Shed Tech arrived and got straight into it. After talking with the guys a bit, it turns out they are busy as and are putting up sheds every day - no shortage of work they say. They didn't even blink when I said the shed was for model trains - they apparently do a lot of them.

First order of the day was for the wall sections to all be unpacked and stood up loosely around the area close to their final locations.

While this was happening the other bloke was getting the roof trusses ready. No mucking around here - these blokes meant Business - with a capital B.

I spent the whole day out there watching the guys and taking thousands of photos - you just gotta love these digital cameras. With these photos I have made up some time lapse videos of the shed being built too. If I had a timer for the camera I could have just set it up and walked away and gotten my shots, but I don't so ended up hand holding the camera, so the videos when made up are ever so slightly shaky. But I digress. So the guys are now making the walls.

For the guys to make a wall, they got a number of prebuilt wall sections and bolted them together.

Then they got the colorbond sheeting and screwed that to the wall and then trim any excess off with this electric nibble they had. The blokes had a pile of battery powered tools all setup with the relevant bit already in the tool. This made it so much faster working than spending time removing this drill bit and putting in that driver etc.

For the two long walls, there was also the guttering to put on. It makes it easier to do it all while the wall is laying on the ground. So they screw on the holders then cut and fit the guttering to them.

While this is happening, one of the blokes would be drilling some holes in the concrete slab where the wall would go and place a few bolts loosely in the holes after laying down the plastic water barrier that keeps the steel walls away from direct contact with the concrete.

Why were the bolts only part way in you ask - this is so they could place the bottom of the wall against the bolts sticking up, to stop it sliding off the slab as they stood the wall section up. Once the wall was sort of standing, they lift the wall up and onto the bolt.

Once this was done, they would raise the wall and then move it into place and bolt it down with these fun looking bolts.

The actual hole in the wall the bolt goes through is quite oversized and this is to allow easy adjustment of the walls once stood up. In fact, the bolts were already loosely in the slab and the wall stood up and placed over the bolts - that's how much bigger the hole in the wall is. Hence the need for the steel plates as well as the normal washers. Here is a close up of the bolts, washer, plate, plastic mat and wall section once bolted down to the slab.

So there were four walls, so here they are being stood up in order.

So all the major wall sections were up, leaving just the section that contains the sliding glass door to be done. So the prebuilt wall frame was lifted into place and bolted down without the cladding this time. This is to allow the door to be properly fitted and cladding to line up properly with it.

After the frame went in, they built the door frame and screwed it into position, thereby allowing the remaining cladding to be screwed on as well.

Now it was time to put the glass panels and door into the frame and we now have a door.

The roof trusses were also being installed and all the cross supports for the roof. There was also the usual strapping to keep it all square.

Leaf guard foam type material was also installed int all the gutters. This will help keep them cleaner and not to clog up.

Next on top was the mesh that will hold the insulation blankets up. This was measured up and rolled out over the top of the trusses and supports and then tied down.

Here we see the insulation blanket being measured up and cut to length.

Now it was up, up and away with the roof. The insulation was thrown up and the guy on the roof would roll it out then place the roofing iron over the top and put in a few screws to hold it all in place.

While he was doing some, the offsider was on the ground and getting the next lot of roofing iron ready. One end of each sheet got the channels bent. This would be the end up at the pointy end of the roof and will stop rain from being blown up and over the end of the sheet.

So they repeated these steps until the roof was laid down.

Next up was the ridge capping on top of the roof - the pointy bit.

While the ridge capping was going on, the offsider was up and adding all the other screws to each sheet of roofing iron. He would mark out where and then go for it with his trusty battery drill/driver and screw in a pile of screws in between where the first guy had held down the sheets earlier. There are a heck of a lot of screws in a shed - a heck of a lot.

You can see him with his blue line marking down the line the screws must be on. To his left you can see how many screws need to be applied and just in front of him how many were used just to tack the sheets in place originally.

While this is going on, the other bloke has finished screwing down the ridge capping and has started to cut the wavy shape on the capping so it will sit down into the corrugated roofing channels. He had a battery powered pair of tin snips and had the hand movement down pat - looked so easy when he did it - me, I would have easily ballsed it up.

Final item was to screw on the end caps.

11:15 am on the Thursday, hands were shaken and the boys were off after a job well done. And there you have it - one completed brand new Titan shed ready for me to start to outfit and make into my train room.