SiLOSSiLOS

Put your shed close or you won't use

About this photo
‹ Back
padlock
1

1Treat it like the small building it is

Wood frame, metal frame, plastic panel: whatever the walls are made of, a shed is still a real structure with a foundation, a frame and a roof, just scaled down — from an open-sided bike cover up to a fully wired workshop. Skip a step you'd never skip on the house and the shed is the one that shows it first.

2

2Free plans already exist

Land-grant university extension services (Tennessee, North Dakota State and others) have maintained public libraries of building plans, originally developed with the USDA's Cooperative Farm Buildings Plan Exchange, going back decades — a shed, coop or small outbuilding plan you'd pay a designer for may already be sitting in a free public archive.

3

3Placement decides whether it gets used

The extension building-plan tradition treats siting (drainage, access, orientation) as part of the design, not an afterthought — a shed sited badly (boggy corner, blocked path, far gate) gets visited less no matter how well it's built.

Explore this area
HomeHouseGardenFarm