
I am a sucker for advertising. I like nicely designed things which appear easy to make. As you may have read on this blog, M&I are attempting to built the ReadyMade MD100 shed. Neither of us has any construction experience whatsoever, but they claim two people can build this in one weekend for the relatively small sum of $1500. A bargain! Maybe this would take one weekend if you had two highly trained, seasoned carpenters. And that is only if they have the site prepared (or are building on a perfectly level site) and have all of the material delivered and pre-cut. I hate to sound bitter here, but as M&I forge ahead with these plans, we are noticing a lot of things that were designed in the name of cheap instead of right. There is nothing 16″ on center, which means when we are interested in putting up paneling instead of the corrogated metal, uh oh, nothing is 4′ wide so we have to put in extra studs. Yikes, we have a significant snow load, the roof they designed may not be enough… sigh. I would like to thank my dad and grandfather again for coming out and helping until late last night. We got A LOT done. The frame is up, the roof has plywood, we even have some of the siding in place. We still have at least a long weekend of work ahead of us to put in the doors (one sliding glass and one steel) and to finish the roof (we still aren’t exactly sure what has to happen there) and finish siding the whole thing. I am not going to say don’t buy the plans if you have your heart set on one of these, but keep in mind, one weekend and $1500 IS too good to be true.