Have you ever had stuff lying around and wished you had a use for it? That’s the whole use-what-you-have philosophy in action.
If you’re wondering how to build a storage shed cheaply, this is how I did it with fence post corners and leftover lumber.
One day I was looking at a small pile of lumber sitting near the corner posts of an 8-foot-high garden fence. I wanted to build a storage shed, roughly 10×10. As I looked at those wood corner posts, I started thinking about pole barn construction, and the idea just popped into my head: I already had three corner posts. Add one more post to make it square, and I’d have my shed.
Like any project, I didn’t have everything I needed in that pile. But I got rid of the pile, and I ended up with a shed way cheaper than buying everything from scratch. It also meant the shed sat right in the garden, which made sense since it was built out of the garden fence in the first place.
From One Shed to “The Triplex”
After building that first shed, I was combining two of my gardens into one, which left several corner posts open for more creative construction. I started tying those posts together and ended up with what my wife calls the triplex: a chicken house, a storage room, and a greenhouse in one structure, about 16×32 total.
Because it was built into the garden fence, the layout worked out well on its own. The greenhouse ended up in the garden. The chickens ended up near the garden too, which made it easy to get their manure straight to the compost pile. I even built what I call a chicken tunnel, routing the chickens around almost half the garden to an open run where they could eat bugs along the way. (That tunnel might be worth its own post someday.)
No 8-Foot Fence? Use What You Have
I know what you’re thinking: I don’t have an 8-foot garden fence. That’s exactly why “use what you have, and adjust” is the whole point. If you’ve got any kind of fence, even a shorter one, you can build storage for firewood, or shelter and feeding space for sheep and goats. Some H-bracing can work as your shorter back posts, with longer front posts added on. You just need to be creative with what you have and build for what you actually need. The beauty of these structures is that they’re built into fencing you’ll already have for your garden or livestock anyway.
Before You Try This
A couple things worth knowing before you start:
- Make sure your posts are treated and in good shape. You don’t want the posts holding up your brand-new shed to rot out a year later.
- You’ll need to adjust. Not all fence corners are exactly square. When I built the triplex, the outer walls actually came out crooked, but I adjusted so the inside was square. That was just me being particular. I doubt the plants or the chickens cared either way.
