I was in need of a tool shed but wanted it to look a lot cuter than anything I could find for a reasonable price. So, instead of settling for something not quite right, I decided to build the shed myself. In this post, I’ll show you the DIY She Shed Foundation: how I prepared and placed the concrete foundation. If you want to check out the basic introduction planning I did before breaking ground, you can check out the planning post here.
So we know what all this hard work is for, here is the finished project.
Perimeter Concrete Strip Footing:
At One Hundred Acres Home, we’re out on an acreage with a lot of wildlife. They keep things interesting, that’s for sure. Within the first 3 months of living here, I left a wood pallet on the ground, and it immediately became a safe-haven for voles. They burrowed under the pallet and created nice little homes, safe from owls and other predators. In case you’re not familiar, voles are like moles but a little cuter. They burrow underground and disturb the yard. I’m currently at war with them, but more on that in another post.
So the main goal of the foundation for the shed was to keep out the voles! To do that, it needed to be a solid concrete perimeter, and it needed to be deep enough to keep them from burrowing under the shed. Yes, this is a lot more work than just placing the shed on a few isolated footings. But I’m willing to put in the work for some extra peace of mind.
Here are quick hand sketches I used as a basic plan for the concrete strip footing.
The top section shows rebar and how a concrete slab would sit on the footing. I later decided to use a concrete brick floor but used a very similar set up. The bottom section shows the wood formwork to form the concrete stem. I’ll show you what I mean.
You can see that I planned to dig the footing 12 inches below grade. I decided on that as we’re not in a frost zone, and 12″ is the general recommended depth for residential strip footings in our local building code.
The Foundation Dig:
Remember that I planned the shed location and laid out a basic frame to outline the foundation in the planning process? Well, I simply used that frame as a guide and started digging. With what? A shovel. Just got my trusty shovel and a wheelbarrow and started digging. It took a few weeks with an hour or two a day of digging. But hey, it was a great workout, and it was FREE!
Here is a progress photo.
Thankfully, I have an area not too far away where I would like to level out the landscaping. This was a perfect opportunity to move some soil over there. Slowly but surely, I moved barrel by barrel of dirt from the foundation area until the dig was done.
Here I am digging. This is just to prove that you don’t have to be a hugely muscular person or a big burly dude to do this. Just keep going. You’ll get there…
Here is a close up look at the dig. I ended up digging a wider footing of about 12 inches instead of the planned 8 inched simply because my square shovel was wider than 8 inches.
See that board on the ground next to the dig? I used boards like that to create a formwork frame on the inside of the footing before the pour. Very sorry I can’t find a photo of it, but you get the idea.
Concrete Footing Pour:
For this DIY farmhouse toolshed foundation, the concrete didn’t really get poured so much as it got “placed”, lol. I mixed about thirty 80 pound bags of concrete in my trusty wheelbarrow in batches of 3 bags. I placed the mixed concrete in the trench and placed the rebar I had planned once I had enough concrete in there to hold the rebar above the earth. Here is a photo of me on concrete day with my mix setup.
Here is a mixed batch of concrete. Note: it is not soupy! It should have just enough water to slump slightly when you place it.
In this first round of concrete, I am only placing the bottom flat section of the footing, not the concrete stem. We’ll need to let the bottom section cure a day or so, so that it’s solid, and then we can form and place the concrete stem.
Here is the bottom section after curing a few days. I already removed the interior formwork. You can see some vertical bar sticking up from the concrete. Those are L-shaped bars that embed into the bottom section to connect the two pours.
Part 2 of the DIY She Shed foundation is the concrete stem. So, I got to work making the formwork for the stem.
Here is a close up of the corner vertical reinforcement. I placed the horizontal reinforcement in preparation for the stem concrete but will raise it up into the middle of the stem once I get some concrete in there.
The wall sill plates will need some anchors, so I set those in the concrete stem when I placed the concrete. Here is the concrete stem after a few days and the removed formwork. You can see the anchors sticking up, ready for wood framing!
Wow! We’ve come a long ways, but we still have far to go. In the next post, I’ll show you how I built the floor of the she shed. And good news, it’s functional, low-cost, and cute!
