Backyard Shed Complete!

The shed is finally complete!  All total, I worked on this on and off for about 3 months, and I am happy with the results:

This post is going to be more about showing what all I have done than about how I did it.  Some of this worright gone on for a long time and I have not documented it well along the way.

We'll start with the doors and latches, which were actually the last thing I did.  The doors are what's commonly referred to around here as "Dutch doors."  This means that each door is composed of a top and bottom piece that can open independently.  So for each opening, there are two Dutch doors, or 4 total door frame sections.  Here's the left set:

 

And the right:

The door pull and latch system is something I came up with and made at the forge.  The left door has a fixed pull, and the right side pull is attached to a rod that acts as a bolt latch between the two doors.

Here is a picture of the back.  You can see the rod coming through the slot in the door, and passing through a piece of square tubing mounted to the door.

Then there is a matching piece of square tubing on the other door that this rod slides into when you close the latch.  You can also see the fixed pull coming through the door in this picture.

The sheet metal exterior of the top doors overlaps the bottom doors, and the sheet metal of the right doors overlaps the left doors.  This causes the bolt to lock both left doors in place, as well as the bottom of the right door, which it is mounted to.  But this arrangement leaves the right top door unlatched.  So I made this little rod to lock the top right door to the bottom right door when they are all closed.

I made all the door frames from welded 1 inch square tubing.  I also made the hinges at the forge from 1/8" sheet steel.  Here are a couple of the hinges that have been made but not yet painted so you can see how they go together: 

 

This is the pattern I cut the steel into before rolling the eyes or barrels at the forge.

Here is a picture of some of the door frames in-progress.

And here is my forge set up inside the shed.

  

 

This was a long project, but the results are worth it.  I've really enjoyed having the new shed.  Unfortunately it's already full.  It seems that no matter how much storage space one has, one will need more.

 

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