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[Scott Chilcote <scottchilcote AT earthlink.net>]

Hi Tom,

Just a couple of points.

Make sure you either have a building permit for a shed that large, or 
don't need one.  Cary requires one for sheds larger than 12 feet on any 
dimension, or did when we built ours.  The requirements differ by 
municipality.

We ordered a prefab 8x12 wooden shed through Lowes, and it turned out 
that the company they work through is right here in Raleigh.  This let 
us go to the display site and fine tune our order.  We're quite happy 
with the shed.  It was quite a chore to paint everything inside and out, 
but looks great after a few years of service.

The foundation is probably the biggest thing to focus on.  Our yard 
seemed pretty flat in the area we chose.  We paid a professional grading 
service to flatten it "within 6 inches" over the whole area, and lay 
down a few inches of "road bed" material for support.  This cost around 
$650 I believe, they also removed a few small trees.

When the shed builder arrived, it turned out that the surface was off 
level by over a foot and a half at one corner.  This required me to dash 
out to the store for several cement blocks with which to build support 
piers.  A couple of these have cracked since then, but our shed is light 
enough to lift with a car jack and replace them.  For a much larger shed 
this wouldn't be possible.

The grader also came the day after a heavy rain (don't they always?), 
and their little tractor left deep grooves across our yard and around 
the side of the house.  The grass still hasn't recovered.  I don't know 
if there's a way to keep that from happening.  The same thing happened 
to one of our neighbors when they had some trees removed recently.

Best of luck,

Scott C.

tkarches AT imapmail.org wrote:
> I'm about to have a 16x16 foot shed built in my backyard. The plans have 
> been drawn up and I'm waiting for a lumber list from the builder. It 
> will be used for storage of outdoor tools, bikes, etc and workspace for me.
>
> For those of you that have taken on such a project, what would you have 
> done (or not done) if you had to do it over?
>
> Thanks,
> Tom