Cheap shed walls

BarnyardEngineering

Well-known Member
Location
Rochester, NY
I built a small shed roof to keep a trailer under cover. Now I've decided it needs walls, but I don't want to spend much.

T1-11 siding is $30 a sheet, and even the cheapest garbage plywood is pushing $20 a sheet. Too expensive.

I'm looking for something somewhat durable, and less than $15 for a 4x8 area.
 
Do you have any overhang eve's, or very little? A good eve can protect a lot of 'flimsy' wall material for a decade or so. But of course we all
want as much interior shed as possible so we don't waste money on an eve on a cheap shed......

Cheap wood products rot, cheap plastic materials fall apart in the sun, what is your poison, more rain or more sun where you are?

Craigslist will show some cheap plywood from time to time, might be your best option?

Paul
 
Billboard companies sell old plastic billboards...very cheap, last a long time. There are separate companies that deal in such material.
 
The bar here for cheap sides on a shed is used tin. Its often free and will last for 100 years more if you keep it nailed down.
 
Frame the walls with old pallets. Cover cover the pallets wit tin siding. Most feed stores give them away or sell them cheap.
 
X2 on the used tin (though it's usually steel nowadays)--I pick it up whenever I can, and have done most of my outbuildings, lean-to's, and other semi-permanent structures with it. For simple construction where functionality's more important than looks, or even for the back and sides of buildings where you can get away with it, putting up a couple horizontal stringers to match the existing holes and screwing the tin to them works just fine, and even helps considerably to stiffen things up. Got several buildings over 10 years old that still look fine even though the tin was used when I got it, and I got it free for the help in taking it off and carting it away.
 
Here too...............that is if you don't mind a rainbow. Apparently lots of folks that use them, don't care and don't paint. Their stuff, their choice, if you don't like it, don't look.....ok I won't but it doesn't bother me.
 
If you can't find any good used tin I would just bite the bullet and buy new. Already painted and will last forever if you don't
beat it up. If you use wood and paint it you will have to repaint every few years so you need to figure that all in. OSB is hard
to paint and if it's humid it will start to cornflake in a few years.
 
Recently I have used shade cloth for this kind of thing.
Using it this weekend to cover an old Farmall H and to protect
my new truck from acorns that leave dents like hail.

Shade cloth may make a durable side screen.
 
Find one of your local billboard/advertising companies. Around here it's Adams Outdoor Advertising. I recently got several heavy, vinylized tarps from them that were 10'x36'. These things are what they put on the billboards and have the ad on one side, and the other side is typically black.

From what I've seen, and been told, these things will last for years, and are far better than the cheap 'tarps' they sell nowdays for a lot more money. On that note, I gave $10 apiece for the ones I got.

Right now I've got a couple of them nailed down as a temporary roof on a new lean to shed I built off the front of my shop. We've had some really hard rains here lately, and it's still as dry under there as it would be with a regular roof.
 
Depending on your framing you might have to put in some furring strips but 1/4" lauan plywood usually runs about $13 a sheet.
 

Any local sawmills that saw pine and sell it rough? Frame in horizontal girts and nail the pine vertically. If you want it tighter put battens over the gaps. I sided a hen house and a small barn that way.
 
cheapest garbage plywood here is 7/16 OSB roofing ( wafer or chipboard ) it? 6-7$ per 4x8 sheet.

then you'd have to paint it with sealing exterior paint. maybee asphalt paint, etc, to water proof it.

6-7$ is about as cheap as it gets for 4x8'
 
I don't think you have looked at prices lately, Menards and HD are both $10.95 for 7/16 4x8 OSB . Menards has steel for $17 for a 3x8 sheet with a 40 year paint warranty.
 
HC!

2mos ago I bought some at lows for 6.75$ a sheet!

Now that I hurricane season, its 10$ a sheet.. Just called Lowes again. Figures.. Raising it for storm season....
 
I needed to make cheap doors for a shed and used 4x8 OBS to make the doors. Painted OSB many times. MISTAKE, OSB still fell apart. So if you are going to use OSB, put it a foot or two under eves, keep it dry.
 
If you want cheap, go to HF and buy either silver or blue tarp and some furing strips at local lumber yard and stretch it tight and screw the furing strips over it, on to framework to hold it tight.
Loren
 
Last year I hung a piece of carpet on the end of my lean to. It is still there and it is only attached at the top and the lower side.
SDE
 
Check with your nearest supplier of metal roofing. Sometimes they have scratched or damaged at a discount.
Still kinda costly, but maybe foot for foot it's the most economical, in the long run. Also, no painting.
 
Got tired of having all my lumber in my shop, taking up a lot of space. So I built a 4x16 shed roof off the side facing the woods. Spaced the 4x4s every 4 foot and put in horizontal members attached to the buildings side. Then skinned it with pool liner to keep the wood dry. On the ends I made "doors" with the liner using grommets and thin rope. Screwed wood strips vertical along the outside of the 4x4s. Nice and tight, no tears yet. Holds lots if lumber now. Pack rat I am! Cost me under $100 mostly for shingles as I had everything else. You could do the same with tarps or billboard vinyl as suggested.
 
(quoted from post at 09:41:33 08/30/16) I don't think you have looked at prices lately, Menards and HD are both $10.95 for 7/16 4x8 OSB . Menards has steel for $17 for a 3x8 sheet with a 40 year paint warranty.

If I could get steel for $17 for a 3x8 sheet I would be all over that. We don't have Menards, just Lowes and Home Depot, and they want $22 for a 3x8 sheet. T1-11 would be more economical.
 
I put up a plywood fence at my parents place years ago.
Needed 60 + sheets.
I went to several local lumber yards and asked to buy there damaged sheets as I only needed 6 foot long for what I was building.
No shortage of sheets that had been dinged with a forklift etc.
Got all I needed for less than half of what buying full sheets would have cost.
Most of them the damage was only an inch or two on the end.
 
It took me a while to figure out what you meant by rainbow, I guess coloured steel never caught on so much here. Its almost all galvanized/aluminized.
 
Plastic wrap, I would guess. I don't know how many mils thick, but I'm seeing green houses that are pretty durable plastic wrap. Kind of milky clear, thick, tightened like shrink wrap. Has to be some thick stuff because I live on the Indiana/Michigan border and we get some pretty good snow, and when the leaves are gone, winds can whip pretty good and those keep standing. Quite a few of them around me. Now, I have seen one cave in after heavy snow, but you say that you already have a frame and roof. Worth looking into. Maybe with enough studs to keep it stiff.
Kind of like this I guess, but clear
 

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