Cordwood Shed Build (part 4)

I know I haven't posted much about the shed lately. I haven't forgotten or given up on the project, but haven't had a ton of time to work on it. Here's the latest and greatest with the shed project!




The window was framed in. It looks great, but doesn't sit quite straight because the main poles are warped.






Mixing mortar. I have found that for my mixture with 20% sawdust, much more water is needed than it says on the bag. The sawdust soaks up a bunch of water.

You don't want soupy or slurry mortar when it's mixed. It should be the consistency of a snowball when you grab and pack a handful together.




I have been using dishwashing gloves. WAY better than the rubber dipped gloves, and no more concrete burns on my hands. These have been a real lifesaver!








Progress on the wall has been slow and steady. One bit at a time...

My method and mortar mixture have both improved by a lot. Using finer sawdust instead of shavings is helping a lot, and I haven't seen any more cracks in my mortar work. My pointing work is improving little by little, too.






Another day's work. Gobble thinks he's helping, but really he is just getting underfoot and starting to irritate me.


I have purchased another salvage window for the big back wall of the shed, and a solid core door for the front. They should work great for this project.

There is more lumber on site. It's all ready to be used for framing, and I'll get to that and have at least the window framed in before I pour the flooring. I don't want the window being somehow broken just sitting around and would feel more comfortable with it out of the way .

Cordwood Shed Build, part 1

A few months back, I decided I needed a hay shed. So I grabbed some warped 4x6s from the scrap lumber pile and drove them into the ground. They weren't square what with the poles warping and my lack of carpentry skill...but hey, it's just for hay! 

Then I added loft framing, and roof rafters. Here is the framing on the shed almost complete.

By this time I had started thinking,
"hey this thing is pretty cool, wonder if I could enclose it for a studio?"

Uh-oh, sounds like I've just talked myself into a lot of extra work.... and I'm STILL going to need a hay shed one of these days!

I added plywood to the loft area first.

Then I added plywood for the roof sheathing.

I used rolled roofing to cover the shed.  Then I sawed off all the ends that stuck out from the loft framing.

The ladder makes the roof looked bowed, but it is not. The ladder is pushing down on the roofing overlap.

Scrap lumber to cut down to size for the walls.

I used cinder blocks with rebar driven into them for wall foundation. I am using this Cordwood method for just two walls for now, to see if this is a good building idea or not.

Cement added to the middle of the cinder blocks and around the rebar anchors.

At this point, I realized that these walls aren't going to be square. Buy hey, no cordwood wall is ever perfectly straight!

The next step was to mortar all the cinder blocks together at the ends. I tried to be careful but my masonry skills just are NOT up to par. Anyone who tells you cordwood masonry takes no skill, is a liar!

Two and a half rods of cut down rebar, eleven cinder blocks, two and a half bags of concrete (mixed and poured by hand), and about half a bag of mortar went into two small wall foundations.


This wall is totally gonna look like a girl built it...... because guess what, she did!

When the foundation was finished, I used the extra mortar mixed in with about 20% wet sawdust and filled in a small part on the base of the smaller wall. I am still waiting on more scrap lumber ends and 6 inch cordwood rounds!

My frank opinion of this building method, so far, is not that great. This is a lot of heavy lifting, lots of mortar and concrete to mix, there's a ton of bending and stooping involved, and more time consuming than I thought imaginable. This is a LOT of work to put up a wall!!

The economic savings aren't very big, but hopefully this will insulate sufficiently so I won't have to insulate and finish the inside of the walls. If nothing else, it sure looks cool...

To be continued --