Build Your Own Garden House – Instructions

Building a garden house yourself is certainly not a problem. In the nearest hardware store you can purchase several kits, the instructions of which explain step by step how the respective house is to be built. However, if you want to build an individual garden house yourself, you need a fairly straightforward and logical guide. We present such instructions in the following article, along with tips on everything else you need to think about when building a garden house.

Step one: explore regulations

On the one hand it is regrettable because it means additional work, on the other hand it is thankful because otherwise there would probably be a lot of really hideous buildings standing around in our communities or one or the other do-it-yourselfer would have collapsed his self-construction: You have to yourself first take care of the regulations even before planning the foundation. The following regulations could be observed:

• You may need a building permit for your garden shed.
• Construction law is a matter for the federal states and is quite individual.
• This is good for maintaining regional diversity, but only makes horticulture possible after a look at the law.
• Depending on the size of the planned garden house, a building application with structural analysis etc. must be submitted.
• Or a simple application with a building description, site plan and building drawing is sufficient, maybe you don’t even need a permit.
• The limit is often 30 square meters of floor space or 15 cubic meters of enclosed space.
• The quickest way to get planning clarity is to ask the local building authority.
• Ask immediately about all other regulations to be observed.
• Here it goes z. B. to static requirements, planning law, neighboring legal limit distances as well as design specifications.

Tired of regulations? Understandable, but there is a clear reason why this should be your first priority: You might find that a garden house that is only slightly smaller than originally planned saves you all the effort and costs of a building permit.

The foundation for the garden shed

Even if some do-it-yourselfers dare to design and assemble a complete garden house (made of wood) themselves, they shy away from laying a foundation (made of concrete). If you want your garden shed to stand long (and straight), however, you shouldn’t squeeze around a foundation that covers the entire ground. The frequently suggested point foundations have already required many a garden shed to wobble, and they actually do not do much less work with all the precise measurement of the points. It just takes a little less concrete.

However, if you pour a floor slab the size of the garden shed as a foundation, it will remain stable until you want to put the next garden shed on the floor slab.

Manual

This is how your garden house gets the right foundation:

• Dig the construction pit
• Mark out the measurements beforehand with stakes and cords
• The dimensions of the base plate should be the same as the dimensions of the garden house
• The excavation pit will be around 15 cm as the later floor slab, because you still have to formwork
• 40 cm deep, for a ballast layer of 20 cm and a concrete layer of 30 cm (10 cm above the ground)
• First put in a layer of gravel from a sand-gravel mixture
  it should repel moisture in the soil
• if there is moisture upwards, the foundation might otherwise lift in frost
  it might even break
• it is compacted by a layer of gravel
• then build the formwork
• Insert boards
• as wide as the foundation should be high
• Recommendation: Pour foundation 10 cm above the ground
• Measure of constructive wood protection
• Build appropriate formwork that protrudes 10 cm from the ground
• Wedge the formwork all round with square timbers until it is exactly the size of the base plate on the inside
• Then lay out a PE film over the entire surface of the gravel layer so that the gravel does not draw water from the concrete
• Lay strips of film over the edge and staple them
• Now pour in concrete
• Mixing yourself is cheaper
• Fill half of the formwork (15 cm) with concrete
• Insert the reinforcement mesh over the entire surface, but with a distance of a few centimeters from the edge, otherwise they could rust
• Then pour concrete onto the reinforcement mats up to the upper edge of the shuttering boards
• Level the concrete surface with a long and perfectly straight lath
• Keep the surface moist while drying
• A tarpaulin prevents drying too quickly when the water is warm
• This will prevent small cracks in the concrete
• Remove formwork after two days
• then the concrete should dry for two to three weeks

Screw on joist hangers for the corner joists

There are joist hangers for sale that can be screwed onto the foundation. There are also some that you pour into the concrete, but that’s a lot of fiddling. These joist hangers are intended for the corner joists. You can determine where exactly you screw the joist hangers after you have read the assembly instructions. Initially, it is only a question of the advantages this procedure has for your garden house:

• Makes it easier to display the corner beams and thus also the wall frame
• because the corner beams stand alone after they have been fixed in the joist hanger.
• Align joist hangers, corner joists and wall frames to test
• Slightly raised foundation with the joist hangers helps with construction and wood protection
• For corner beams and the lower part of each wall frame, choose wood of durability class 1 or treat squared timber with wood protection
• Also seal 10 cm protruding concrete strips thoroughly against water
• Plank corner beams and wall frames from the outside, the bottom row is above the floor
• The end of the planking gets a drip nose made of metal or wood profile (ask your wood dealer).

All this together means that emerging water never gets to the inner construction and cannot accumulate anywhere on the ground where it comes into contact with wood. Any part of your garden shed that gets somehow wet can dry out completely. These simple measures can therefore significantly extend the service life of a wooden structure.

Instructions: Half-timbered garden shed

Don’t worry, you shouldn’t build such a complicated structure as you know it as a historical sight. But when people talk about half-timbered buildings, you immediately know what they mean. A timber frame garden house is by definition a half-timbered house. Your garden house should of course not be a four-story half-timbered house. The good thing about the timber frame construction is that it is very simple and logical, at least when it comes to smaller structures that do not incur large static loads.

The garden house presented here is really easy to build – 4 pre-assembled walls are set up and connected, each wall consists of a simple wall frame. The walls of the garden house are installed lying on the lawn, and the connection is made with angles and screws. Later you put the walls upright and connect them using a corner beam. The basic construction of the walls are wooden frames with bars in between for stiffening. If you use 10 x 10 centimeter beams for the entire garden shed, the beams are always “the right way round”.

Material

• 8 vertical squared timbers, 100 x 100 mm and 2500 mm long
• 8 connecting timbers, which are placed between the top and bottom, 100 x 100 mm and 2300 mm long for the individual wall frames
• 8 supporting squared timber, 100 x 100 mm and 2300 mm long, which are placed vertically in the wall frame
• 2 corner timber, 100 x 100 mm and 2500 mm long
• 2 corner timbers, 100 x 100 mm and 2800 mm long
• to connect the walls to a square and to create a raised support for a pitched roof on one side (which side, see the section on the roof).

Build a garden house

• assemble four walls
• this can be done lying on the floor
• Each wall frame consists of two vertical squared timbers with a length of 2500 mm
• Place a connecting timber with a length of 2300 mm in these at the top and bottom
• Connect the squared timbers with angles and screws
• You now have four wall frames that are 2.5 x 2.5 m in size
• Now place the wall frame upright
• Connect two walls with the insertion of a corner beam at a right angle
• Now place the corner joists in their joist hangers, align them well and screw them together
• Now gradually erect one wall frame after the other, fix it in the floor and on “its” corner beam and finally screw it together
• When the “cube” is reached, the wall frames must be stabilized by supporting squared timber placed vertically between them
• Frames have an external dimension of 2.50 x 2.50 m
• the square timbers are each 10 cm thick, so the inside is 2.30 x 2.30 cm
• Place two square timbers of 10 cm in this 2.30 m wall
• 20 cm deduction results in 2.10 m and thus a support beam every 70 cm
  For walls that are later completely clad with tongue and groove boards, these supporting squared timbers can also be used in the same way
• For walls with doors and windows, adapt the positions of the support beams to the door frame and the window frame
• If doors and windows are installed, you can clad the walls with tongue and groove boards

Pay attention to the correct direction and overlapping of the boards, rain must be able to run off, this is just as much a measure of structural wood protection as the drip nose on the bottom row.

The roof covering of the summer house

The corner beams are higher on one side than on the other. A frame construction for a sloping flat roof is now attached to them. This frame construction will then be covered with roofing felt.

This is the right place to explain on which side you should place the higher corner beams, because the laying direction of the roofing felt is also determined by the same considerations: The garden shed should be set up so that the most protected side of the mainly occurring Exposed to wind direction. If you don’t know which one it is, they will give you e.g. B. can provide information at the local building authority, instructions for laying the roofing felt can be found on the Internet.

Download detailed instructions and detailed plans for a garden shed

So that you can make it even easier for yourself and work according to precise specifications, we have put together a collection of various garden houses for you. In this collection you will find many other great building instructions for many other projects that you can easily recreate. This collection of instructions is definitely worthwhile for you if you like to build things yourself in your garden or at home. This is how every project really works!

Conclusion
For every average handyman, building a garden house following the instructions above shouldn’t be a problem. You create a really individual garden house. If you don’t want it to be a villa, you will also be able to easily change the instructions according to your personal wishes and come up with some individual decorations.