DIY garden house

Recommendation points

• Foundation tricks
• Grillage and frame floor
• Walls, corners, openings and abutments
• Everything you need to know about roofing and attic
• Internal and external finishing

How does the improvement of a suburban area begin? We propose to consider the option of building a small house with amenities and a terrace, which, after the construction of a full-fledged housing, will become an excellent place for rest, storage of household equipment or even a cozy guest house.

Inside the house there is a separate bathroom (4), a recreation room with good natural light (3) and a small change house with an entrance from the outside (1) for storing small things or setting up a mini-workshop. For a pleasant pastime in the fresh air, we will allocate a place in the plan for the attic (2), approximately 180×260 cm.The total dimensions of the house are 6×6 meters, just for the standard length of the scaffold.

Foundation tricks

Our construction is based on 16 concrete pillars arranged in a 4×4 square with a 2 meter gap. The site is marked with a grid stretched on stakes, a mark is transferred to the ground from each of the 16 plumb-line intersections. Four internal wells are dug strictly at the intersections, twelve external ones – with an inward displacement of 7 cm.

You can dig by hand, drill with a motor-drill or use a crane-boring machine. We drill holes with a diameter of 350-400 mm to the depth of freezing of the soil plus an additional 50 cm. Pour a bucket of rubble or river pebbles at the bottom of each well, then add two buckets (25 liters) of 300 grade concrete with a filler of fraction 5-8. We stick plastic 110 mm sewer pipes (gray PVC) into the mortar that has not yet set. We orient them with sockets upwards; for long pillars, pipes can be made prefabricated. We align the pipes vertically, as well as along the intersections and the general level of lacing, pour buckets of sand into pits 1-1.5, fill the rest with earth.

After the bases have set, we pour the same concrete into the pipes, you can sit down by vibration or pinning. The post is reinforced with a 14 mm profiled rod in the full length of the pipe; a 200 mm long M12 hairpin is welded to the upper edge. Such a foundation does not react in any way to the winter heaving of the soil: a smooth sleeve around the post does not allow the soil to freeze to the concrete.

Grillage and frame floor

It takes a week to dry the pillars. On top, you need to pull a fine (15 mm) mesh-chain-link, painted or galvanized, two meters wide. We stretch it on the pins of the pillars, sew the edges with wire.

Then, a grillage from a bar of 150×150 mm is assembled on the foundation:

• at the intersections we make a half-tree undercut;
• we make holes for the studs with a brace of 20 mm;
• fold the inner grillage grill;
• horizontally wind up the outer beams, observing the dressing scheme;
• tighten the nuts over the wide washers until the bar crushes the mesh;
• we finally display the common horizontal plane with roofing felt linings;
• cut off excess studs.

We pull the mesh to the grillage either with wire or knock it out from below with galvanized nails. We put a windproof membrane into the cells, tuck it high at the edges. After that, the space between the beams is filled with a mixture of wood shavings and hydrated lime 5: 1 and covered with plastic wrap, the edges are shot with staples.

A crate is mounted on top of the film: a 50×150 mm board is placed on the edge in both directions with the formation of cells of about 580×580 mm. Each side takes eleven boards, a total of twenty-two. At the edges and at the points of intersection with the grillages, the boards are drilled 70 mm with a 10 mm drill, then they are attracted to the base with self-tapping screws. The intersections of the crate should be performed as on the grillage – with a half-wood trimming, we wet and seal all cracks and junctions with summer foam.

The floor frame, with the exception of the cells completely located under the terrace, is filled with mineral wool and covered with a semi-permeable (150 g / m2) diffusion membrane. The floor is laid with an edged board along the entire plane. We make ventilation holes in the cells under the terrace in the frame boards.

Walls, corners, openings and abutments

Further work begins with two walls opposite the corner attic. First, on a flat base of the house, we lay out and assemble on self-tapping screws a frame made of boards on an edge with outer dimensions of 570×240 cm.In the assembled frame we add 2.4 m racks of boards 24×150 mm with an inter-axis pitch of 60 cm. 60 cm. These short boards will be used as horizontal beams in the frame for joining the sheathing.

We raise the wall vertically, temporarily fasten it to the base with plank slopes. The bottom board of the wall frame is attached with 120 mm dowels to the edges of the floor system every 40 cm.The second wall is assembled in the same way and installed perpendicular to the first, temporarily tightened with kerchiefs.

Note that the outer corner is “empty”. We cover it with foam, put in a 60×60 mm timber, and screw the outer boards of two walls to it, having previously made holes for 100 mm self-tapping screws.

We assemble the rest of the walls in the same way, the inner corner is processed in the same way as the outer one. From the outside, we sheathe the house with 12 mm sheets of OSB 2400 long, so the vertical seams fall exactly on the centers of the posts. Release the sheets 200 mm above the wall frame, below the sheathing goes down at least to the middle of the grillage. At the corners, the edges are displayed along the frame of the adjacent wall.

When one side has been sewn up, we scroll a 40×40 mm bar along the vertical edge from the inside and fill the remaining space with foam. From the same corner, we begin to cover the next wall, fasten the edges of the sheets to the connecting bar.

To form doorways, choose a board of 50×150 mm and knock out of it an installation box with internal dimensions of 100×210 cm for the entrance door and 80×210 for internal (with a width of 70 cm). Before installation, the vertical wall post is cut out completely (can be divided into 4 crossbars), after installing the box on top of its vertical upright, 35 cm inserts from the boards are added.

Window blocks with an opening width of less than 60 cm are formed by adding horizontal beams. A block for a wide window is assembled from a board of 150×50 mm and inserted into the frame in the same way as for a door, but in this case, fragments from at least two racks must be cut out for it, and T-shaped junctions must be strengthened with kerchiefs.

Everything you need to know about roofing and attic

To save from cold and heat, the ceiling must have a layer of mineral wool insulation with a thickness of at least 200 mm. In this case, it is better to make the roof single-pitched ventilated. An attic can be, but only as a storage room for materials with a useful height of 40-60 cm.

From a board of 150×50 mm we knock down trapezoidal single-pitched rafters with a height of 60 cm in the back and 110 cm in the front. Two six-meter trusses are being installed above the “complete” part of the house, and five more will be installed with a lift above the attic.

To obtain a sufficient width of the rib, a counter-lattice from a 50×50 mm bar is screwed onto the lower boards of the rafters with self-tapping screws. The truss top board is longer than six meters due to 40 cm overhangs in the front and rear of the house. Therefore, it will be necessary either to merge the existing wood with the linings, or to import a longer one. Vertical jumpers are installed one and a half meters from the low edge of the trusses. The rafters are also reinforced in the front with similar racks, but they are positioned exactly above the walls under the direct sewing of the terrace from floor to roof. The entrance to the attic is located in its widest part – in the inner corner of the terrace.

Fasten the rafters to the wall frame by adjusting the solution of the latter at the top. Then add between the rafters intermediate floor beams from a 150×50 mm board with a 50 mm counter batten. Hem the OSB ceiling with a thickness of 9 mm and screw the outer skin of the house to the ends of the ceiling. Fill all the gaps at the junctions with summer foam, then put a vapor barrier and mineral wool into the ceiling, nail a windproof vapor-permeable membrane on top. Cover the floor of the attic with 12 mm OSB sheets with trimming the grooves for the rafters. Sew up the vertical walls of the attic with OSB plates along the vertical rafters in the rafters, insulate them as desired. Cover the rafters with plastic wrap and lay a cold roof made of metal or profiled sheet.

Internal and external finishing

In conclusion, we will give recommendations for finishing work. Outside, you have a flat plane with hidden racks every 60 cm.Therefore, both plastic siding and a block house will fit perfectly.

For interior decoration, drywall suggests itself, but fastening directly to the racks will be a mistake: the wooden frame walks a lot, cracks will appear. Walls can be sheathed with OSB, followed by refining MDF panels or clapboard. If you still intend to use drywall – prepare the profile frame according to all the rules.