Sports Illustrated - Monday, September 15, 2003

The Shed Solution: If the problem is having too much gear and nowhere to put it, adorn a corner of your yard with a stylish storehouse By Jeanne Huber      If you long for a garden shed as a place to store mowers and rakes, and bicycles and skis, extra dishes, animal cages and an off-season barbeque, you're not alone. Last year some 3.4 million people bought one, the National Gardening Association says, joining millions of other homeowners in the pleasure of finally having a place to put all the stuff that had no place.      Choices range from $150 plastic or metal storage units that you card home and assemble - but probably don't want to see - to $15,000 cream puffs with steep roofs, copper gutters and fancy trim. Those may take months of planning but wind up doubling both as storage and ornament. In between is a wide range of stock designs that homeowners buy as kits or pay a dealer to assemble on site. Either way, $2,000 to $3,000 buys a building that's reasonably attractive and big enough to hold a lot of stuff.      When it comes to choosing a size, bigger isn't always better, says Michael Gruskin, former owner of the Garden Solutions shed-building company in Woodinville, Wash. "Whatever size you get, you'll outgrow it," he says. "It's like closets in a house. Sheds fill up, and then you need to clean them out." He also advises to check whether local building rules allow a maximum size without a permit. "There's a lot of appeal in not needing a permit," says Gruskin, now retired. "We could do a shed in days, not months."      The quality of construction materials varies considerably. Kits and stock models put up by specialty companies usually have solid wood framing, but some use full 2x4s while others use skinnier stock. The choice doesn't matter much for the studs, but with the rafters it may mean the difference between a straight roof and one that sags. Wood siding looks great and can be painted or stained. Textured exterior-grade plywood, often called T-111, also works well but must be painted to preserve the thin outer layer. Avoid siding made from compressed wood, Gruskin says.      Beyond the issues of size and quality, key considerations for most people are style and cost. On Bainbridge Island, Wash., Nancy and bill Baran-Mickle and their three boys needed space for bicycles and lawn gear. They shopped around for a kit and were surprised by how few included an overhanging roof, without which everything looks like a box. They finally found what they wanted and plopped down about $1,500 for it and, instead of paying the dealer $1,799 to put it up, decided to assemble it themselves.

The kit arrived by truck, on one huge pallet loaded with pre-cut lumber, doors with hinges already attached, three operable windows and parts to make a 10-foot workbench and a shelving unit along the back wall. All the accessories were there too: fasteners, cedar siding, tar paper and cedar roof shingles.      Bill had envisioned putting up in the shed in a week with the help of his sons, 11-year-old twins Chris and Matt and six-year-old Graham. It actually took about a month, with time off for muscle soreness, plus numerous breaks spent figuring out how to use the various metal connectors. The step-by-step instructions were clear, however, and in the end, everything fit perfectly.      Candi Williams, a Seattle resident, took the opposite approach when she needed extra storage space. She had gone the build-it-yourself route several years earlier, but that was "when I still had a back," she says. This time, she wanted someone else to lift and hammer, so she hooked up with Gruskin and settled on one of his stock designs. Her cost for an eight-by-eight-foot shed with a four-foot-deep porch: $2,200. She went with Gruskin's basic finish details: textured plywood siding, asphalt roofing and a single window.      Gruskin builds most of his sheds in sections at his shop and trucks them to the site. Once there, he sets the pier blocks in place and levels them, lays the floor, erects walls and frames the roof. Some sheds go up in an afternoon. "It was great," Williams says. "I didn't do a thing."      The porch, which she almost didn't order because it cost an extra $400, has turned out to be one of the nicest features. She's decked it out with candles and crowned it with a weather vane. "We call it our grotto," she says. "It opens into my rhododendron garden. We sit there in the shade. It's really pleasant."