I built this shed to closely resemble the appearance of an actual lighthouse. I found two web sites advertising lighthouse sheds for sale, but neither is very realistic. Their builders chose such laughably non-authentic materials such as vinyl siding, vinyl windows, and asphalt shingles. Most lighthouses are round, but those sheds are octagonal. Why? It is much easier to build an octagonal structure than a curved one, so their builders took the easy way. Furthermore, the overall shape of those buildings screams "a playhouse for kids," not "a lighthouse." I spent many hours analyzing the design and proportion of actual lighthouses, then built this one so that it looks like a genuine lighthouse.

I have more pictures of this shed on www.lighthouseshed.com .

I call this my Alpine shed because its steeply pitched roof is the ideal roof for snowy alpine areas. It includes a second story that provides a great place to study, read a good book, or serve as a kid's play room or guest quarters. This shed, and my lighthouse shed, will be featured in a book entitled Shedworking: the alternative workplace revolution that will be published in July 2008.

I have more pictures of this shed on my www.lighthouseshed.com site.

Ever notice how architects and builders often give ostentatious names to their homes, such as "The Chateau"?  Well, I don't believe in ostentation, so I named this shed "The Two-by-Four," which is the epitome of a prosaic name for a building.  The inspiration for this name came from the wall structure which, as you can probably see, consists of stacked 2x4's (pronounced, "two-by-fours").  I thought this would be an easy way to give a shed (most of which are bland and ugly) the attractive look of a log cabin.  Attractive, yes.  Easy, no.  The worst part was sanding the exterior.  Armed with a brand new 20-pound Porter-Cable belt sander, I began sanding early one morning.  As the sun was setting, I realized that sanding horizontal surfaces with a heavy belt sander would make a great Olympic sport, or perhaps a way to reduce the recidivism rate — if incarcerated criminals were forced to do this instead of watching cable television, only truly insane people would commit crimes.  Belt sanders are, of course, primarily intended for sanding horizontal surfaces (where their weight is a plus).  If you're wondering why it took so long to sand the shed, it's because I didn't merely skim the surface.  Because most lumber these days is more twisted than the followers of Charles Manson, I had a lot of sanding to do to even out the irregularities.

In my opinion, the copper gable vents (fore and aft) leave something to be desired from an aesthetic standpoint because they're disproportionately large, but I wanted plenty of ventilation in this shed, so appearance took a back seat to practicality.  Appearance was paramount in my choice of a roof.  The picture doesn't do the roof justice; the roof is birch sealed with multiple coats of various sealers.  It's pretty, and like a lot of other pretty things, it's bound to be high-maintenance.  However, shingled roofs are so run of the mill that I couldn't conceive of placing a quotidian roof on this innovative shed.

The door is yet another door that I made from scratch.  I opted for a plain door this time, without a window or carvings (here are some of my fancier doors), because I want to put my energy into my next door, which will make your jaw drop . . . guaranteed.

After building this shed, I concluded that making beautiful things with care and precision is exponentially more difficult and time-consuming than slapping together just-ol'-anything, as too many carpenters do.

Here is the side view of the shed.  Notice the generous 2-feet overhangs in the front and rear.  These substantially increase storage space in the two overhead lofts, both of which are just over 6 feet deep (although they appear much shorter in the photos, because of geometric foreshortening).  Speaking of lofts, let's step inside this shed and take a look around.

Here is the back loft . . .

. . . and the front loft.

Here's an inside look at the back wall.  The shelf spans the width of the shed.

Here is the inside of the door when the front section was nearing completion.

This is the first shed I made.

And here is a "made from scratch" gable vent that I later added.

This is the second shed I made.  It's an 8' x 12' A-frame, sporting one of my hand-carved doors.  I made and set the trusses by hand.  After I set the last one, I wondered how precisely I'd placed them, so I measured the distance from the first to last truss at the peak, and then at the bottom.  The distance was off by less than 1/32nd of an inch . . . not bad, eh?  Don't you wish your house was built to this level of precision?

My next shed will be interesting for two reasons.  First, if you think that these sheds are fancy, just wait until you gander at the next one, which will be the Taj Mahal of sheds.  Second, I'm going to test a new way of building in which I'll build the roof first.  Once that is totally complete, I'll jack it up, and swing the walls in underneath.  This will eliminate the problems associated with building roofs, which are more dangerous and take more time to build than a comparable structure built on the ground.