mapsedge | Starting the Spring Project early

My garage is full. I've no room for projects like any serious woodworking. All of the available space is taken up by the mower, the garden tiller, the spreader, the shovels, hoes, rakes, and bags of fertilizer. I want a shed.

I'm going to finally have one.

But here's the challenge, and the reason I'm starting in January a project I hope to have done by Mother's Day: I'm going to build the whole thing as much as possible with reclaimed lumber and recycled supplies.

When I see a building being torn down with a bulldozer, it breaks my heart a little bit because the ultimate destination of all that debris is the landfill. That's bad for a couple of reasons.

One, landfill space - or at least land that people are willing to have used for landfill - is limited, and landfills are filling up. Oh sure, there's plenty of land where we could create new landfills, but just try it within thirty miles of someone's back yard. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Two: that's a lot of wasted raw material. The lumber you find at your local lumberyard is coming from trees that are far younger than they were even five years ago. When I trimmed out my kitchen in 1995, all of the wood casings - stain-grade pine - were clear, with minimal color variations from growth rings. The trim you buy now, from young trees because all the mature trees were cut down long ago, is strongly striped, cut from trees so young the mills can't avoid the growth rings.

Every building torn down without reclaiming the supplies used to build it means that many more trees cut down, more petroleum used to harvest and transport, more of our planet's finite resources squandered because time = money.

Okay, that's enough activism for one day.

As I was talking about this, Michelle drew her fingers across my forehead, outlining the billboard that's been slowly forming there over the years.

"Aaaaaactivist," she sing-songed.

"That's a very big brush you're painting me with," I protested.

"Well, you have a very big forehead."

Back to the shed and the reclaimed lumber: To this end, we just returned from Habitat for Humanity Re-Store having purchased 106 linear feet of 2x6 - enough lumber for the floor of an eight by twelve shed (except for the two very long sides). Next weekend, we'll go back and grab a couple of twelve footers. I haven't drawn any plans yet, but the shed I have in mind will be on the order of eight by twelve, seven feet tall at the door, maybe nine feet at the peak. A small walk-in door and a window on the long side, a double-wide ride-in door on one end, a window in the other.

I would like to employ the help of my friends in scouting for supplies. I need:

2 x 4 lumber, at least 8' long
3/4" plywood
1/2" plywood
3 windows, about 3' high by 2' wide
1x4 lumber, at least 8' long (or 1x6, or 1x8, or...you get the picture)

If you see any of these things by the side of the road with a "FREE" sign on them, grab them for me won't you? Or let me know where they are.

The Re-Store typically doesn't carry 2x4s, and when they do they're usually the checked and waned castoffs from lumberyards. I can purchase 2x8s and rip them down if I need to.

They also don't usually have plywood in any quantity.

So, that's my goal: build my own shed using reclaimed supplies. I like the green nature of the project, but I also just like the idea of having a shed.