CocoCabin - my new studio, shed, workshop build

Firstly I should say if anyone professional or even competent starts asking too many questions, the illusion that I know what I'm doing is going to dissolve VERY quickly

Secondly, in this instance the roof is very light, and the pitch is sufficient that it sheds any weighty debris aka wet leaves, snow etc

I expect you're right that I've over-engineered the ridge board such that is could act as a ridge BEAM. The posts are still in place as part of the stud framing in the gable ends, but more to give bracing to the cladding than to support the ridge

I expect you're right that I've over-engineered the ridge board such that is could act as a ridge BEAM. The posts are still in place as part of the stud framing in the gable ends, but more to give bracing to the cladding than to support the ridge

I reckon that will be fine even if snow does melt, freeze then stick.

Firstly I should say if anyone professional or even competent starts asking too many questions, the illusion that I know what I'm doing is going to dissolve VERY quickly

Yeah but look at it! Man's clearly got skillz

Finishing the cladding. Took some time deciding the best to overlap the cladding over the tops of the window and door. All overlaps are taped with mastic tape.

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Flashings -

Looking back I didn't take many (any) pics of this bit. I had 150mm 90 degree flashing for the wall corners and gable ends of the roof, and 2x 3m pieces of 150mm ridge flashing which was something more acute, but flexes to whatever your roof pitch is, within reason.

First I marked and cut the wall corner. I cut one side of the flashing straight and one at an angle, which would go up the side wall. This bit is all tricky to explain, and was some of trickiest stuff in the whole project

After I'd done the four corners I cut the pieces for the gable ends of the roof. These ones are called barge board I think.

I did some cutting and some folding to get something that looked respectable at the bottom of the roof's slope. But I couldn't find anything online really that related to the exact sort of hardware I had, so there was some freestyling involved here.

The ridge flashing was more straight forward in that respect - I just laid over the ridge and also over the end flashing and screwed in. In another sense it was very difficult because a) you have to silicone in foam 'eaves fillers' underneath, but until you have the ridge flashing up there it's hard to say exactly where the edge of the flashing will end up b) the silicone gets everywhere c) you're straddling the razor sharp ridge d) getting up there is very difficult as everything is clad in slippy red hot steel.

In the end I unscrewed some of the screws on the roof sheeting and used those holes to attach some studwork off cuts to make a walk ledge

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Framing for the two big windows.
I basically made the apertures in the studwork 20mm wider than my double glazing units, and 65mm taller. The plan was to mount the units straight into the studwork so this allowed for 10mm on every side to be packed out and to allow for any wonkiness in the building. The extra 45mm height was to allow for a cill at the bottom which the unit would sit on.

Then I would simply cutout a hardwood internal frame and a hardwood external frame to sandwich the glass in. The hardwood was just simply PIR hardwood from selco stained and treated back.

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What was your budget for this?

About 2.5k

Once I'd assembled the outer frames and nailed them into the studwork apertures I removed the double glazed units from their aluminium frames (you can see the old sliding doors leant against the back wall of the shed in some earlier photos above) and lifted them into the openings.

They pressed up against the external frame and then I blocked them in with the internal frames which is pre cut and painted.

After they were all secured in I siliconed the outside. I fucking hate silicone.

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With the cabin weatherproof and watertight I was pretty keen to get all my tools and a workbench inside. But before filling it with crap I needed to get the floor done. But before getting the floor done I wanted to insulate and box on the ceiling, as this would probably be a messy and dusty job.

I still had half a sheet of 100mm insulation left over from the floor and then I got really lucky and got a bunch more 100mm insulation from Freecycle. This would be enough to do the ceiling.

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Great read and great work! Inspiring!

It's a great job, I always toy with the idea of doing something similar to our garage.. just overclad the whole thing in something similar to yours..

It's a pretty versatile material, they also do flatter box profiles at CladCo too. Not that cheap, but a lot cheaper than wood cladding and planning looks upon favourably as it's non-combustable

Same deal as the floor. Cut with a handsaw and whack it in. I tried to get them tight enough stay in on their own, but if you make them fractionally too big then it's a fucking nightmare, so mostly I cut them 10mm small and just used an old nail in the side of the rafter to keep it in place until I box them in.

Some of the insulation I had got off Freecycle ended up being slightly thicker deeper than the rafters, which was super annoying. In the end I dug out some pine battens I had under the bed from a bed slats project year ago and they turned out to be not only the exact right width, but also already cut to EXACTLY the right size. I nail gunned these to the rafters and they sorted it all out and looked nice to boot.

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While I wasn't sure what I was planning to do about electrics yet, I knew that I was going to have some lights at the very least. So before boxing in the insulated roof I wanted to run a couple of cables up there.

A friend of mine had a couple of spools left over which he'd given me after some home renovation. I hadn't done any research or learnt anything about electrics yet but one spool had 'lights' written in Sharpie and one had 'ring' written.

So I drilled holes through studs and rafters from where I thought I would have my power coming up to the ridge and along, inside the insulation.

I ran two cables, one to the centre of the ridge for a bright strip light, and one to a point halfway down the front pitch in the middle of the two corner windows, where I thought it would be nice to have a pendant.

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Painting. My least favourite thing in the world.
MDF. My least favourite thing in the world.
Painting MDF. My least favourite thing in the world.

I cut the six ceiling panels to size and then painted them with a roller on the lawn. I did a coat of MDF primer and a coat of white paint. I needed another coat really but I didn't give it one and so it looks a bit shit. But I was only really painting it white to make the cabin brighter, otherwise I would have left it bare.

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My plan was to space out the MDF ceiling panels with 5mm shadow gaps for a contemporary, minimalist look. I planned to use the nail gun which gives more or less invisible fixings (lost head nails). If they were butted flush against each other any small gaps where boards deviate from true, or any slightly un-flush areas would be extremely visible. Whereas with shadow gaps the eye can't tell the difference between 5mm and 7mm so I thought it would end up being more forgiving
I've panelled walls this way in Birch ply and it looks sick.

Anyway my nailgun, for some reason, doesn't like firing nails when pointed straight up. It fires maybe 1 time in 10, and in the process fills the surface with marks but no nails. On top of that when up a ladder, using one arm to pin a big, ungainly bit of MDF in an exact position, and the other arm to raise a very heavy nail gun up to it, you need it to work.

So in the end I had to use big ugly screws. The result being that my modernist ceiling now just looks like unplastered plaster board. Oh well.

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That's odd about the nailgun - which do you have?

This onehttps://www.screwfix.com/p/makita-dbn600zj-64mm-18v-li-ion-lxt-second-fix-cordless-nail-gun-bare/622hf

I know its late now. But the next time you want a minimalist roof and also do it by your self.

These guys come in handy. Where I live you could rent one for £5 a day.

Consider lost tite screws. Used them on my panels, still visible but much more sleek than a standard screw.

https://www.toolstation.com/lost-tite-screw/p35982

worth getting a bit of filler/wood-putty and paint over the screws?

Yeah I did consider finding one of these early on when I was planning but as usual, when it eventually came to having a rare child-free day to get some work done I just wanted to crack on!

Interesting, I don't know why this didn't occur to me. I used similar tongue tire screws on my floors a while back. Oh well. Too late?

Yes, probably a good idea. Will it ever happen now I've got a serviceable shed that I can do fun things in? Possibly not!!

I’m following your garden room project with interest as it looks like I’ll need to build one as my bike store and pain cave. Without going into too much detail what do you think this will cost you in the end?
I’ll likely go for a sloping roof rather than pitched but with a large footprint and perhaps some sort of secret section for bikes to hang in which is out of site, even if you look into the room.
Also why did you have to got to planning? Is it a local restriction? I’m expecting calling it a shed would be enough to avoid that.