Bertha Heathcote
The past couple of weeks or so, Jesse and I have been in “clean up” mode where we try to knock as many things off of our to do list as possible. One of the things we’ve been doing is preparing for winter (yes, in the middle of summer) and one task on our list was building some type of firewood storage shed for our wood fired hot tub.
We had firewood leftover from last year but because winter caught us with our pants down, we didn’t have time to gather quality wood.
Luckily, we were fortunate enough to find a neighbor that had leftover mill ends which we snagged up.
As one of our goals is to develop our property debt-free, we turned to our collection of reclaimed building materials that we gathered for pennies, and got to work with yet another scrap wood project. The first thing we had to do was determine what size firewood storage solution we wanted.
We decided to build a shed that was roughly 8′ wide, 4′ deep and 4′ tall. Jesse took the reins with the design of the firewood shed, but the entire project went pretty smooth!
Building with reclaimed materials is always a challenge because while they are often free or at least extremely affordable, they are not without their downfalls. In addition to plentiful warpage, rot, and nothing being uniform, reclaimed lumber more often than not is filled with rusty nails.
While it’s works pretty well to either pull the nails out or bang them in and flatten them with a hammer, they do pose a huge threat to chop saw blades! We actually did cut straight through a nail we discovered, and the blade survived, but we don’t expect to get away with that twice!
The other challenge we had is that the weight of the wood was too heavy and the front girder of the shed started to crack and bend under the pressure. I was able to quickly cut a couple sets of legs, prop them up on some bricks, get them screwed into the girder, and release the car jack.
With these plans, you should be able to build your own simple firewood storage shed for an affordable cost.
Even if you don’t have access to reclaimed materials as we do, the entire structure can be built with 2x4s, screws and a couple pieces of roofing.
This is a pretty basic storage shed that should hold roughly a cord of wood. – A chop saw that can cut angles is the minimum you need, but we have this double bevel sliding compound miter saw that we love since it’s much more versatile.
– We have this Makita impact driver / cordless drill set that we are happy with. (4) 12” Pier block = $27.60 Rough Assembly & Cut Overview Roof (9) 2x4x8’
Cut to 36″ Options to Upgrade the Plans Make it a 10’ wide roof for an extra side overhang giving more weather protection to your wood stacks.
For heavy snow loads use 2×6 for roof structure and consider sheeting the root with 7/16 OSB or equivalent. Extend roof to one side to allow for hanging hoses, axe, garden tools etc. As promised earlier this year, we’re trying to be kind to ourselves and free up as much bandwidth as possible before starting construction of our barn / home.
We even had a little fun this summer foraging for edible plants, canning up a fruit storm and making our own root beer, which we deemed critical to our happiness. Going forward, we are really focusing on getting buttoned down for winter, taking care of a few personal tasks like paying off existing debt, and we even have a long list of things that we need an excavator for, so we can only imagine what the next month has in store for us!
Do you have some sort of shelter you use or do you keep it simple and stack your wood between a couple of trees, and cover it with a tarp?
