Shedding some light

I’m almost done with my storage shed and boy, have I learned a lot. Not about construction, but about myself.

To recap, I’m building a 10x10x10 shed in my backyard so I can remove all the garage junk from my shop to do a complete revamp of my shop layout. In my last blog, I detailed how the kit I bought was deficient in some areas – things like too-short or too-long components that had to be replaced. There were also a few things the instructions called for that I simply found to be sub-standard with regards to strength and design efficiency, which I also had to correct.

Now that the project is wrapping up, I’ve learned the following:

I’m not as young as I used to be. Constructing a 100 sq. ft. building by yourself ain’t easy. I’m sore, aching all over, and I’m covered with bruises and scrapes. Also, I can’t work as long as I used to, and I take more breaks while I am working.

Cost doesn’t always equal quality. This kit was not cheap; in fact, I had to budget this thing for a year and wait till the fall sale to get it. Still, that doesn’t mean that it didn’t come with a lot of junk components, which it did.

Heights bother me now. As my wife and I have both done a lot of rock climbing and rappelling, this came as quite a shock. But I had more than a few moments of vertigo while up at the peak of the gambrel roof. This bothers me a lot because that didn’t used be the case – I suppose this relates to the “not as young as I used to be” theory opined earlier.

And finally, I don’t impress myself like I used to. There was a time when accomplishing a major task like this would have me boasting – more to myself than to others – for weeks. Now I accept it as something I can do because I have the skills, judgment and experience to do it. On this thing, at least, I’m good and I know it. And you know, that last item above has a tendency to cancel out the negatives that came before it.

I think that’s a fair trade.

Till next time,

A.J.