My wife's friend has offered me a 8'x4' galvanised 'shed' that has provided secure storage at the back of her open-fronted garage for some 7 years. She has decided to have proper garage doors fitted and has no further need for the 'shed'. I just have to dismantle it and take it away.
I imagined that it would be a simple question of unbolting the various sections, but no - it is held together by scores of self-tappers - it didn't look like a 10 minute job! She admitted that a handy-man has assembled it; he had claimed it was the most difficult thing he'd ever done and it took twice as long as he'd allowed. I was beginning to get cold feet - which grew even colder when I read the single product review on the supplier's (Homebase) website:
"Do not touch with a bargepole .......... Bought this for my mother as an extra storage space at the back of the garden, if it had been wooden I would have torched it!.
Took three guys, 10 hours to build it, including an engineer and a builder. Instructions were inaccuate (seriously I know everyone says that but they really were way off) many of the screws were defective. Dont attempt it unless you are skilled and experienced in this area."
Of course, the assembly instructions are no longer available ...... oh dear!
I just wonder if any of you chaps have ever attempted to dismantle and reassemble such a structure and if you can pass on any advice e.g. take it to bits as quickly as possible and take it to the tip!
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Yes, Dog, I'm sure that's it, although the one I've been offered is just a metal-galvanized finish rather than coloured.
The more I think about the job, the more I think it's going to be like dismantling a cheap flat-pack wardrobe that was never designed for reassembly. I don't know how those self-tappers are going to behave when I try to put it back together.
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I think it'll be ok. You need a power screwdriver - preferably high speed like on a drill, not on one of those appalling handheld jobbies.
You need to put it together in the original "logical" order, albeit that you can take it apart anyway you like.
Remember that the strength of the self-tappers is not how strong you can tighten one, but is how much force they have when all are tightened. So don;t go all Hulk-ish on each one.
If I wanted it, I don't think I'd find the process daunting. Just a matter of starting at one end.....
Last edited by: No FM2R on Sun 21 Apr 13 at 20:53
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Shed of the Devil....open the doors and expect Lucifer to burst out.
I can honestly say that this was the worst job I've ever tackled, and that was putting a 6X3 brand new one together. Bought by a friend, a widow-woman with a useless son, I was cajoled to do the damn job. Picked a nice day, all tools checked, radio on and brews ordered, I opened the box.
Awful...the panels were so thin that they were floppy and uncontrollable in the slightest breeze. great care taken not to bend one...that'd be the end. Screw holes didn't line up, requiring lots of use of the drill. A lot of what you think may be self-taps might be small bolts with washers and nuts......cheapo crap stuff that the screwdriver chewed up. I chucked most and went home for my own stock. No spanner or socket I had, and I've got a lot, fitted anything....North Korean standard probably. All had to be done with pliers or Moles.
The shed was for her garden tools but the doors were constantly coming off the sliders so neighbours had to help her. Eventually it was relegated to grandkids toys,, which didn't need to come out very often.
Oh, and someone's been on the roof so that leaks now on one of the joints. We both agreed a wooden one would have been better. The reason she didn't go for one was maintenance, she has severe arthritis. This one was from Argos but I guess they're mostly made by the same people.
Good luck HW....don't ring me !
Ted
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If not the same species, Ted, I fear we may be talking about the same genus!
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>> The reason she didn't
>> go for one was maintenance, she has severe arthritis.
Next shed I have will still be timber, but it will have a pond liner stuck on the top for a roof - it will last the life of the shed, and all I will have to do is paint it very occasionally with a good quality preservative - no faffing about with felt roofing.
www.rubber4roofs.co.uk/EPDM-Rubber-Flat-Roofs/Shedcover-EPDM
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Being the critter is only 4ft wide, is there no way you could move it - as is, using rollers, and then lift it with the help of 4 hairy assed geezers onto the back of a van/truck etc.
Reminds me of a few owses ago when I gave away a large area of decking to a hefty fencing contractor I know,
he had the devils own job in dismantling it all, and burnt out his Hitachi drill in the process.
Last edited by: Dog on Sun 21 Apr 13 at 20:59
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Hire or borrow a box van and move it whole...what's a day of your time worth?...and then there's the lack of weariness?
Last edited by: Westpig on Sun 21 Apr 13 at 22:23
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It's quite small - only 8' by 4', so can't you just lift it with some strong men and put it on a trailer?
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My preferred option also would be to move the wretched thing in one piece but, unfortunately, at 4' wide, it's too wide to go round the side of the house. I suppose I could dump it on the front patch, which my wife wouldn't like; she'd be pretty upset if I demolished the house and, if I don't want to upset the council then I'd better not fell a swath through their trees to get it over the back fence.
I fear that the 'labour' cost of dismantling, transporting and rebuilding come to far more than the cost of the shed.
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How much is one of these new? Then guess how many hours to dismantle and rebuild. I expect you to find your time is worth more than this activity. Obviously buying a new one has to factor in the time to build it as well but at least it's not been damaged/botched whilst being dismantled.
Probably buy one for about £250? So maybe it is worth your time if you need it.
And if the person getting rid of it does not need it where it is, if you don't take it I assume they'll be paying someone to take it?
Last edited by: rtj70 on Mon 22 Apr 13 at 14:31
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In the Channel 4 series "George Clarke's Amazing Spaces" they featured someone who had bought a shipping container to use as a garden office.
Unfortunately the side access was only three feet wide. So they cut the container up into flat panels using oxy-acetylene and welded it back together in the back garden. It was a lot more difficult than they expected and took much longer than planned.
It would have been better to have hired a crane and lifted it over the house.
I think you may end up having similar feelings if you accept the challenge.
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>> It would have been better to have hired a crane and lifted it over the house.
I wonder what the house insurance firm would have to say about that if you did and it went horribly wrong?
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>>>lifted it over the house
Having felt the minimal tin thickness of these flimsy sheds this kit would get you sorted...
www.bigfatballoons.co.uk/product.php?products_id=1437&gclid=CMWi8I7J3rYCFXMRtAodfWQARQ
Go onto Freecycle and you'll get a decent wooden shed that size for the cost of a new sheet of felt.
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The only way to get the shed you want is to build it. There's a short row of haphazard sheds here - the bicycle shed where my disused car tools and still-used (but not often) chainsaw live with a lot of old bikes and crap, the garage which herself's cousins have turned into an experimental home brewery and the woodshed.
But I don't have it in me to knock up a timber shed with a concrete floor these days. Time was when I would have done it, and regretted starting to do it no doubt, but I'm just not that physical any more although I hate to admit it. In a careless moment a couple of years ago herself and I bought online a shed that turned out to be one of these carp tin jobs. It's horrible, its double sliding doors sticking and bent, although at least it has a concrete floor. The lawnmower is supposed to be arriving tomorrow and it will live in there, but first I have to move about a ton (it looks like) of cheap old carpet - where's that going to go? - and rearrange the lawn scarifier thing, the SiL's trolley jack and my axle stands to make room for it.
This shed is called scathingly the 'Wendy shed'. It's utter crap.
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Bunch of wusses...
Obviously all the screws are there and work, obviously it fits together, and obviously there are no pieces missing - because it is together.
Off with the roof, probably two bits, disconnect from the floor and split corners into 4 walls. No need to take off all the mountings, doors, windows, hinges, brackets or both sides of a joint.
Using a power screwdriver I bet I could split it in an hour or so, and put it back together in 2 or 3. You don't need any instructions because you only minimally took it apart and you were there when you did it.
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>> Bunch of wusses...
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X 2
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>> Obviously all the screws are there and work,
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>
Not obvious at all. Any screw in something metal outside will be rusted solid, and the head will be corroded away so that the screwdriver bit just spins uselessly. You'll angle-grind most of them off, apart from the vital ones, which will be inaccessible.
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Fascinating - I suspect that the contributors to this thread divide neatly into those that have seen one close-up, and those that haven't ;-)
I wonder if, as per the 'Gloster Meteor' thread, I could persuade the RAF that shifting a shed with a Chinook would constitute a valuable military exercise.
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>> shifting a shed with a Chinook
No need for expensive military skyhooks. I know that a proper container lorry can put an empty container 20ft away with its small extensible crane, and a proper crane, not even a very big one, could lift one over a smallish house no problem.
These operations are a pleasure to watch too.
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While I agree with Mark that it wouldn't be too difficult to move and re-build, I would advise leaving well alone. A slightly strong wind and the panels just start twisting. A stronger wind and it will come crashing down.
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I'm sure you were all dying to know 'did Haywain get a decent result with satan's shed?' Well, the deed was done over the weekend. The shed is now parked at the bottom of our garden and is already filling up with useless junk.
An old mate came over for the weekend, so we were able to size the job up on Friday evening and drink some wine to ensure that we were in good enough humour to face failure. When we tackled the job on Saturday morning, we were delighted to discover that we could put a sack-barrow under each end of the shed and trundle it along a well-surfaced cycle track for the half mile back to our house. The most exciting bit was getting across the main road before the traffic lights changed.
On reaching home, we soon realised that we couldn't get through the side gate; four rugby league players could have lifted it over the fence - but I don't know any. Similarly, Mrs H (who teaches at a private school next to a helicopter station) couldn't muster up any help from any Apache pilot daddies. We took the roof off and any bits that were holding the shed square so that we could convert its footprint from a rectangle to a parallelogram and thus squeeeeeze it through the gate.
With a bit of scraping, we were successful and set about rebuilding it at the back of the house. It took a while, but we got there in the end.
TIP OF THE DAY - if you suspect that the batteries on your ancient cordless drill are giving up the ghost, have a good look at the terminals on the drill. Mine were heavily corroded and needed cleaning/treating with copper grease. I was on the verge of chucking it away!
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Well done Haywain. I knew you could do it.
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Moving a metal 'shed' - Dog
