Next step - under floor sheathing and vapor barrier

Brad officially retired last week - at least from his 40-year career from the National Park Service. Now the real work begins! This means that work can begin in earnest on the She Shed. Poor guy - no rest for the weary. Hah...hah...

This next step is probably going to be the hardest of the entire project, but only because there are just the two of us, and we aren't spring chickens anymore.

We built our first house in the mountains north of Flagstaff, Arizona way back in 1991, moving in the spring of 1996. We were working at Grand Canyon at the time and worked on it mainly weekends and holidays. It was small at only about 1000 square feet, but it was completely off-grid and solar powered. Here is a photo of it nearly done. We were in the process of building the front stone wall.

Northern Arizona home - our first project

Brad and I were the primary "builders" with help from some dear friends during key times. So you can see, we like projects. That's one reason we were drawn to Jamaica Cottages sheds. I am amazed at the quality of both the materials and the kit itself.

Since we worked with the National Park Service, we moved often and ended up owning 8 different homes. Only one didn't need any work on the house itself - only landscaping. We've owned two historic homes, one of which we got placed on the Historic Register.

Some of the projects were fun; one definitely wasn't. We chose it simply because the choices of housing were awful, and we had to find something and make it into something we could handle and afford. Thank goodness we are handy and don't mind getting our hands - and everything else - dirty!

So when it came to working on the floor of the She Shed, we knew we were going to have to get creative. The reason is that the next step on the building was to add the vapor barrier and under-floor 3/8" plywood sheathing.

If you have enough friends living nearby to help, you can simply flip the floor over and staple the vapor barrier into place over the frame and then nail the plywood sheathing over that. In this manner, it is also extremely easy to make sure everything squares up.

With just Brad and me, we weren't going to be able to flip the floor over. So we used a couple of boards to lift up one side of the floor to access the underside as shown in the photo below. Before lifting the frame, Brad had temporarily nailed a piece of plywood in a corner to keep it as square as possible while moving.

Floor lifted for access to the underside

One of the things I like most about this kit is the instructions that came with it. They are thorough and in color which makes everything stand out and easy to discern what is being discussed. We put our 70+ page Assembly Instructions into a 3-ring binder to make it easier to keep in order.

Brad checking assembly instructions in our binder

Vapor barrier in place under main flooring - not needed under porch

Plywood sheathing nailed in place and vapor barrier trimmed

The last photo shows the vapor barrier trimmed, but what you can't see is the 3/8" plywood sheathing. We once again lifted the frame just enough to slide the plywood underneath. Brad then slid under the frame and used screws instead of the included nails to screw the plywood onto the frame.

Throughout the process, we continually measured corner to corner to ensure that we were square.

It wasn't as bad near the back of the building where the ground slopes down and there was a little room to move. But once you get towards the front, there was barely enough room to fit the drill.

As Brad said, it's good that he isn't claustrophobic! His back looked like he had measles at the end of the day; he was so pockmarked from all the gravel.

This would have been so much easier if we could have flipped the floor over after nailing everything together. So if anyone is building a kit, I recommend that you have a "barn raising" party and enlist a bunch of friends to help with this step. It will be a LOT easier and faster! We are so happy to have this section over with!