Over the weekend, we built a shed, as well as a platform for the shed. Technically, this is the first “deck” I’ve ever built by myself, and overall I’m quite pleased with the results.

We’ve been parked here in Vermont all summer, and the little things we need to maintain this lot have started to stack up underneath our camper. We realized that since we’re not moving Charlie any time soon, we could totally build a storage shed to hold all of these things, and perhaps a few other things that we’ve wanted to have, but couldn’t in our nomadic lifestyle. Since we finally have an exclusive “home base”, we finally get to have this luxury, and I’m so excited about it.

NOT THAT SETTING THIS UP WAS AS SIMPLE AS I ANTICIPATED, HOWEVER. Step 1 of the process was “have a flat place to assemble the shed” We barely even started, and we were already dead in the water ????.

Kate purchased this shed for about 150 USD on Amazon. The result is nice, but it does not have a floor, and absolutely required a flat, level surface. They suggest concrete, but I didn’t want to do something that permanent on an RV lot. After a bit of debating, Kate and I decided to basically build a small deck in the same way most of the people build decks out here – on-top of concrete bases. This allows the deck to be removed easily, but holds the deck in-place.

So, I busted out OnShape, and my ol’ engineering skills from my previous career, and designed the deck based on what materials I could get from the local big box home improvement store.

For another 200 bucks in materials, and a trip to pick up the wood, we were ready to go. I will always order lumber online while designing stuff. the entire process was so much easier because I never had to even go in the store. I’m a huge fan of not going into Lowes, or any of those stores – they’re just a gigantic energy drain.

Also, we got to use our new truck rack for the first time! We plan on using this to take the kayaks and other things with Leela when we’re adventuring. It’s got a 1000 lb capacity though, so we can load stuff up on it, too.

Several cuts, some leveling, and what felt like a million screws later, we had a nice, solid platform for our shed to attach to. I was happy to find that I only had a few scraps of wood left, too. We wasted very little in building this!

The next day, we came back out and assembled the shed. One side-benefit that I didn’t consider was that not only did the deck give us a portable way to level the shed, as well as a nice floor for inside the shed, but it also gave me a very easy interface to attach the shed to the deck so it doesn’t blow away in the wind. I just ran 10 or so screws through the shed directly into the joists under the deck planks.

The worst part about assembling the shed was peeling the protective plastic layer off of everything. Also, we put the roof on backwards on-purpose because we didn’t want the water running off the shed to go underneath the camper. This had some unfortunate side-effects related to the door, but we managed to work around that.

Ironically, a chunk of the shed’s storage was necessary so that I could store the tools I need to build the shed. Along with that, though, we now have everything we need to build a nice deck on the front of our lot, but that’s not going to happen until next summer.

Building this kind-of made me wish we did something like this in Taos when we were there, but at that time wood was so damn expensive. Maybe if we ever go back to our parcel, I can set something like this up. It sure would be have been nice to be able to keep our tools out of the rain.

In the meantime, it’s nice to see our cobbled-together front deck look at least a bit more organized now that all the stuff that was spilling out on it has been put in the shed.