Pallet Man-shed, One-man Build, Under $2500. 1-year of Weekends Part One.

uncompressed video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt_-JQcij5k

I've been making treehouses since I was a kid. Always scrounged up material. Now as an adult I have a little budget, but I still can't give up my roots of upcycling stuff to make my forts. A few years ago I discovered pallets, and I've been "building up" (all puns intended) to this project. This project is made as a labor of love and was done over a years time, working weekends only, (skipping the cold of winter, and the really hot days of summer,) with no help from another set of hands.

well the entire support was done with pallets. I would of used pallets for the walls too, but my town has a size limit for out buildings of 100 sq ft. so If I would of used pallets, the thickness of the pallets would of really reduced my usable space so I opted for 2x4, 1x2, 2x2 and the walls are the Dog ear wood picket fence (3/4"x5.5"x72") from Lowes. For footings I used 2"x24"x24" flat cement tiles or slate tiles I had left over with cinder blocks or 4"x4" trapezoid footings to make sure I had no ground contact with the pallets.

There is not a single nail in this project, it is all put together with 1 5/8" #6 deck screws, and also 2", and 2 1/2". Some bolts were also used. For the roof, snow picket fence was used that I picked up used, and then covered with 24"x50' rolls of vinyl covered aluminum sheeting. Some 3/4" screws with washers built in were used for that.

The smaller windows were made over the winter in my woodshop out of paintsticks and 8"x10" rectangles of plexi-glass.

Almost all the other stuff was picked up on facebook marketplace for next to nothing or in many cases for free. Its amazing what was out there. The floor was the floating interlocking pergo flooring I got for $35, Some guy broke his futon so he was giving away his mattress, two weeks later another guy had ruined his mattress and was giving away the frame. I just kept collecting stuff I would need (doors, windows, even the chandelier!,) as I progressed.

The big thing was finding the 5'x16' pallets for free. That really was a blessing as it allowed me to really get a nice level final level for 16'x20' deck for this Man-shed (nick named "the doghouse")

Tools used were: two dewalt battery operated drills, circular saw, Radial arm saw, Japanese pull saw, block and tackle, rope, ladders, tape measure, speed square.

I said that this project took a year to make. That's a bit of a misnomer. It actually started 6 months earlier with planning the Dog house. I have a 3 acre property on a lake, and most of it is woods. The house is 250' back from the lake, So I wanted a weekend overnight cabin. I didn't want to take up space on the lawn, so I had to choose a spot in the woods, and off to the side. The issue was the property is very steep, so the platform for the cabin would have to leveled somehow. The spot I picked was on the edge of the lawn and went into the woods. This has a big drop-off.

Most folks would of built pilings, and posts. but that would of been a whole lot of work and money,. plus It would be 6 months before spring, so I had a lot of time to gather pallets from facebook, so I figured I could use them instead. For the Winter, I was now with a mission to keep getting pallets. It was pretty easy, Just search facebook marketplace, and somebody is mad enough at there delivery service for not picking up pallets and will gladly let you take them. Some of them were even so glad to get rid of them they would help load them into the truck.

Well while that was going on, it was time to figure out exactly what to build. The town said it had to be under 100 sq feet, so after a bit of playing around, I figured that left me with one of two foot prints: either 10x10, or 8x12. 8x12 allowed me to build with standard sized lumber, and with playing around with 3D software and standard sized furniture, it really seemed that the 8x12 would work, Alas if I used Pallets as walls, with the pallets being pretty thick, the usable space on the inside would be reduced to about 7x11, and That was too small, so I resigned myself to standard 2x4 uprights, and a thin skin on the outside.

It actually took quite a bit of time and pencil drawing on graph paper to work this all out, I tried all kinds of configurations, and furniture to fit everything I wanted into the space but not have it too cramped. The town didn't have any height restriction, so I made the decision to go to 12 feet high: a 7.5 high first floor, and a 5'x7' loft area for 2 other people to sleep.

I then went to work with some CAD software (AC3D) to get all the sizes right, and allow me to easily move around doors and windows in a virtual environment to get what I wanted. Many, Many, hours were spent designing. I realized the problem with most of these types of Cabins is the lack of windows, so this one was going to have a lot. For safety I also wanted two exits, two doors. After months of trying, (and also planning out the deck,) I came up with the design as pictured in this step. I then modeled the walls, and the cutouts for the window and doors. I even made a paper model of the cabin and in photoshop did a 3d rendering of what I imagined what the house would look like from the window of my house.

With the 3D CAD done, I made some educated guess as to what it would look like outside my window and I photo-shopped an image of it. The first picture of this Step is what that looked like next to how it actually looked when I was done. Pretty Close IMO. Over the winter I built 5 24x16" windows out of plexiglass and paintsticks. I also spent about 15 minutes every night scouring facebook marketplace for supplies. over the winter I was able to make arrangements to pick up all sorts of materials for next to nothing and free. See the pictures. The best deal I got was when I got the big picture window for the front (36"x 24") for a whole $10, the seller through in "for free" a stained glass piece. I was expecting some kind of small sun catcher but instead it was a magnificent, albeit falling apart, 100 year old lead etched stained glass window. I was in shock, In good shape I imagine I could of sold this window for the entire cost of this project. This of course required me to re-consider half my design to put this piece of art facing South so it would cast the light in the morning into the cabin. Had to move the doors and windows to accomodate it, etc,etc. In addition, It needed major reconstruction of its wood frame, which was a whole project in itself, but I was hunkered down for the window anyway, so what fun it was.

Anyway this is it for part 1, let me know if I should go onto part two, where I build the 16'x20' deck for this beast. - J