If you follow me on social media, you know that over the past few weekends I’ve been building a new garden shed in the back yard. We already had a shed, but it’s full, and we also still have a lot of stuff in the garage that would be handier outside.
In the interest of public service, here’s what I’ve learned. For the record, the kit is a 9-by-12.5 feet “Lifetime” brand shed from Costco.
The instructions leave a lot to be desired, and the instructional videos really are misleading. They show two people snapping these sheds together like Lego bricks, and it’s a lot more complicated than that.
You absolutely need a perfectly level, square platform. I built a “skid” platform on concrete blocks, which themselves are sitting on gravel and sand beds.
If you try to put one of these sheds on uneven ground, it is never going to go together, and you are going to be in a world of hurt. Even a concrete patio might not be level enough.
I mean flat and level. If you use wood, don’t go cheap. Get pressure-treated wood rated for ground contact, and try not to get those warped and bowed boards they sell at Home Depot or Lowe’s. Order them from a real lumberyard, if possible.
There was a lot of fiddling necessary to get the parts to fit; the walls are held to the base by giant snap-tabs. (Remember building a “snap-fit” plastic model kit as a kid? Same idea.) The plastic has almost no “give” or flexibility; it’s the same type of resin that heavy-duty children’s toys are made from. Some people suggested using a heat gun to warm up the tabs enough to slide them together. I used a big hammer, a wood block and a lot of swearing.
The last time I built a shed like this, it was a metal kit from Sears, Roebuck — so it’s obviously been a hot minute. I recall the assembly being much easier than this plastic kit, although I may be misremembering. Based on Google street view, that shed is still in the yard of our old house 11 years later, though looking a little worse for wear.
With the Lifetime kit, most of the parts are held together with self-tapping sheet metal screws. Those screws are barely sufficient to hold the pieces together and it’s very easy to strip out the holes. Also, some of the holes aren’t drilled through properly, and that wasn’t the only quality control boo-boo I noticed; a bag of washers was supplied with the kit, and some of them didn’t have holes punched in them. On others, the screws wouldn’t fit through the washers. I ended up going to the hardware store and buying a bag of zinc-plated screws with built-in neoprene washers to keep moisture out.
Speaking of moisture: After the first heavy rainfall, the shed leaked, mostly around the thin plastic “skylights” in the roof. Those skylights are an odd design choice; otherwise, the roof is a fairly clever design in which the rafters double as rain gutters. The skylights are flimsy and almost guaranteed to let rain in; and they don’t provide much light to the interior anyway.
The front doors are another clever design; they come with a neat little latching mechanism and the hinges are built right into the structure of the shed itself, to make it harder for them to jimmy open or come loose.
Unfortunately, poor quality control also let the doors down; the metal rods holding the doors to the structure wouldn’t fit until I shaved them just a little bit with an angle grinder. Similarly, the metal edges of the doors — where the padlock hasp needs to be installed — were just a smidge too tight. They needed copious coaxing with some silicone lube, a mallet, a pry bar and a lot of profanity. And the instructions, once again, are not terrible clear; if you carefully follow the diagram in the instruction manual, you will be installing one of the door edges upside down, and you will have to spend a lot of time removing and reinstalling it. (Ask me how I know.)
So you pays your money, you takes your chance. I think we paid around $1,500 for the kit, delivered; plus I paid another $500 or so for the lumber, concrete blocks, gravel and assorted other hardware, and $9 for a bottle of Advil. For another thousand dollars, we might have gotten a pre-built wooden shed delivered. I’m not 100 percent sure the savings was worth it.
Although it’s done, I’m not putting anything into it until I can waterproof it (I’m going to caulk all of the seams) and possibly reinforce the walls with an internal wooden frame. Overall the shed feels sturdy, but the walls flex easily and I could see them buckling if someone accidentally leans on the shed, or if a tree branch strikes it during a heavy storm. If I recall correctly, the manufacturer claims you can hang objects weighing up to 30 pounds on the walls as designed; I think they’re dreaming. The flimsy plastic hooks provided in the kit will never support 30 pounds, and even if they could, the load would pull the walls apart.
My review: You get what you pay for, and this entire kit definitely feels like it was built to a price point to be sold at Costco — much like their hotdogs.
Hopefully this review helps someone else who’s considering buying one of these shed kits.