 A friend of mine, Alex, asked me to help him build a shed for his garden. He needed a place to store his bike as he'd been throwing it in a cupboard under the stairs and getting it in and out was a bit of a nightmare. Alex works for an engineering company and they have lots of old pallets and packaging materials stored outside in the yard which they were happy for us to take away and make use of. We pulled out the cleanest pallets that we could find, two of the pallets were identical and we thought they might be useful as side panels for the shed. They were 1200mm long and we thought that would make a good height for the shed. We also pulled out some small pallets with wider slats which we thought would make good floorboards for the shed and some small sheets of plywood. This wouldn't be enough to make the whole shed but it was certainly enough to make a start and besides it was all that I could fit into my small car. We had to make a few adjustments to get everything inside too. Alex's garden is quite small and there was really only one place that we thought that a shed could be put which was on the top level of his decking. We started by laying out the space with the two identical pallets that we'd use as side panels to get an idea of what size we wanted the shed to be. What I'm thinking is to top these down to 700mm which is here and to move this to here we can just scroll that and then fill in these holes and both of them and that's just two side panels and two point six. We had a rough idea of making the shed around 2.5m in length, 700mm deep, add about 1200mm high with a sloping roof to help the rain run off it. I started by working on the two side panels for the shed. I used a crowbar to prise off the runners from the bottom. Then I used the circular saw to cut the pallets down to 700mm wide which would be the depth of the shed. Then I screwed the runners back onto the new edge. I used to ride wool screws here so there was no need to drill pilot holes. The slats on these pallets were 75mm wide and the spacing between each slat was also 75mm which was really useful as it meant that we could just fill the gaps with slats from other pallets that were the same width to create a complete panel. I just hammered these into place using the old nails that were already attached and then secured them properly with screws. If the spacing between the slats was not equal to the width of the slats, the side panels would have taken much longer to assemble as we would have had to prise off all of the slats and then secure them all back on. This pallet wood can split quite easily when you prized them off with a crowbar but rather than waste the split pieces, I just applied some wood glue and hammered them into place. As the split slats were quite a tight fit, the pressure from the slats each side of the split piece of wood would hold it together until the blue drive. The nails and the screws that I used to attach the extra slats were quite long so they were piercing through to the other side of the panel. So I just hammered these into the surface of the wood to get them out of harm's way. Needless to say, we weren't going for pristine looking shed here, it just needs to be functional and we would spend some time at the end of the project making the shed look nicer. With the two side panels built, we could then get started on making a floor for the shed. I had some old pressure treated fence posts going spare in my garden, which I thought would make a good base to prop up the shed off the decking to create an air gap underneath the shed. This would ensure that the pallet wood would not be in contact with the decking so that it wouldn't soak up the moisture and rot away quickly. On top of the three fence posts, we'd need some beams to support the floorboards. I had two, three metre, three by two's, left over from my workshop build, so I went back to my house to pick them up and cut them down to 2.5 metres with a hand saw so that they would fit in my car. Once I was back in Alex's garden, I did a quick test run to get my head around her everything might fit together. So the three fence posts would sit on top of the decking, one at each end and one in the middle. The floor support beams would sit on top perpendicular to them and the side panels would sit on top of the fence posts too. We'd then need a moisture barrier in between the fence posts and the rest of the structure. In the far corner of the decked area, the two fence panels met at an angle which was less than 90 degrees. It was probably more like 80 degrees. To make the most of the space we would have available inside the shed, we decided to position the side panel at the same angle. We underestimated how much extra work this would create for us as the project moved along. I roughly marked up this angle on the ends of the floor support beams using a pencil and a straight edge just by eyeballing it, no precision involved. I cut this angle out with a circular saw. I had to make a pass from each side as the blade wasn't quite deep enough to go all the way through. Then the floor support beams would fit fairly snugly against the side panel on top of the fence posts. Because this 80 degree angle would make the back of the shed slightly wider than the front of the shed, I had to trim off the end of the front floor support beam by about 10 centimetres. We would use some damp proof coarse plastic left over from my workshop build in between the fence posts and the floor support beams. I'm no expert on this but my theory was that this should stop any moisture from the ground up, getting through to the shed. Next I started to dismantle the smaller pallets for the wider slats that we'd use as floorboards for the shed. I left an overhang at both the front and the back of the shed's floor so that we could trim them to the right size later. I screwed these boards directly to the floor support beams using 8 screws, 4 at the front and 4 at the back. This may have been overkill but it made for a nice solid floor. As it was known of ember, it started to get dark early so that was about all we had time for on the first day of the build. We took the side panels inside to store them so that they would dry out a bit as when we collected them from the yard they'd been outside for some time. The floor panel was now too big to move inside so we leaned this upright against the wall of the house to help any rain run off it. The little rain hat for it, which was an IKEA bag wrapped in some electrical tape. While the side panels were indoors, Alex gave them both a coat of white primer. On day 2 of the build, we positioned the side panels and floor structure together again and it was time to cut all those floorboards to the right size. I made a mark where the side panels met the floorboards at both ends and then used a straight edge to join the two marks. I did a quick check to make sure that there were no nails in line with where I'd be making the cut as that could damage my blade. Then I made the cut with a circular saw. I did the same for the back. This time there was a nail in the way so I used a nail punch to hit it out before making the cut. Alex managed to source a couple of 2x2s that we decided to use as braces to join the two side panels together. I wanted to use half lap joints for these pieces so I held the first piece in place and marked up where the joints would need to be cut. Then I made a series of cuts with my circular saw blade set to a depth of around 2cm using a speed square to guide the saw. Then I could just knock out the pieces with a hammer and use a chisel to clean up the joints. Then I could screw the brace to the back of the side panels. The second brace was attached in exactly the same way at the bottom, sitting beneath the floorboards. With the two braces at the back secured, we could then start to attach more 1200mm long slats to them to form the back panel for the shed. At this point we ran out of pallet wood so we went back to the yard to get some more. We got some extra pieces to apply one too. We soon built up a good rhythm with the back panel with Alex dismantling the slats and me doing an easy bit, screwing them to the back and gluing in the split pieces where necessary. The British weather decided to turn on us at this point so we had to make a makeshift shelter using some tile poorly. While it was raining I worked undercover adding the final floorboards to fill the gaps. I measured up, cut the sides and screwed them in place. In this footage you can see how gaps had appeared in between the slats of the side panels. That's because while they were stored indoors the wood dried out and contracted as the moisture content was used. We'd need to address that problem later on in the build. Next I went to sort out the floorboards in the 80 degree corner. For the final piece I had to do lots of careful measuring and marking up and then cut out a piece with the jigsaw. It took a few tweaks to get this right but eventually it's lot of gameplays quite nicely. The final job that we did on day two was to cut a couple of pieces of plywood to attach to the front facing edges of each side panel. These would later be cladded with pallet wood to keep the look of the ship consistent but the plywood would provide a solid base from which to mount the hinges for the doors. I had to cut a small notch with the jigsaw to fit around the floorboard. Do the same with any windows tab.