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Back and side walls easy enough, front wall was definitely the most interesting with the door and window apertures.

I actually really enjoyed reading about wall framing and learning about headers, shoulder studs and king studs. It's super satisfying.

I got the window apertures for the two corner windows as close to the end of the wall as possible while still leaving enough meat to take the weight of the corner of the roof and headers

Starting the wall framing. Again, 16 inch centers and with an extra stud sideways at each for the 'california corners'

18mm OSB down for the floor

Yes! Where? And are you in tomorrow?

Insulation in the floor. Not much to say here. Cut with a handsaw, joists and noggins taped over with silver insulation tape to minimise the 'thermal bridging'

Made a quick jig to get the insulation-supporting battens all exactly 100mm below floor level. Treated roof battens 19x30 for this

Floor joists and noggins.

The joists are spaced at 16 inch centres, happy to discuss this in more detail with anyone who's actually interested, but suffice to say that the UK is utterly and uniquely stupid in that we use metric for all of our timber lengths and imperial for all of our sheet materials, so you can't build anything without doing some cutting.

From what I can tell though spacing to 16 inch centres is the best/easiest/most efficient way

Edges of the sub floor in and weed surpressant down. At this point I spent some time making sure it was super square.

There's a lot of ways of doing this using methods like the 3/4/5 or large folding squares but for me the best by far was simply measuring corner to corner and making sure you get the same result, racking the frame slightly to adjust it.

Yes, I used a weed membrane

Once I'd cleared the back corner of the garden and measured out the building's footprint I laid some foundation stones.

For a building this small single, dense concrete blocks is sufficient and there's no need for much digging, concrete or fixings.

I dug shallow holes, lined them with several inches of pea gravel and dropped the blocks on top.

I set a corner block first and then used a good straight stud and level to level all the other blocks to that first one.

I tried to get the majority of each block inside the buildings footprint so that they wouldn't be sticking out too much at the end.

Timber arriving from Fullham timber.

18mm OSB for the floor
11mm OSB for the walls
47x175mm treated timber for the subfloor
47x125mm treated timber for the roof joists
47x100mm treated timber for the stud walls
47x200mm for the ridge board
100mm insulation for the subfloor
19x30mm battens for supporting insulation and also for the metal cladding

This is a screen grab of my submitted drawing for planning, for the original larger size with both windows on the front elevation.

This was done in SketchUp with zero working knowledge of SketchUp.

The planning process was relatively easily. I did a design on SketchUp, but I can't really use SketchUp (I'd love to learn) - I just used to upload a 2D likeness labelled up with dimensions.

Then I just screen grabbed Google earth of the house and indicated where it would be, and filled out some forms.

I got one reply saying that something was missing from the site plan (can't remember what) so I amended it and replied. Then 8 weeks later I got permission granted. It cost me £170.

Fast forward and this is the more or less finished article...

I'd been meaning to do this thread for a while and after the cabin got some interest in the background of my current build thread, I thought I should get on it...

Now I'll start posting some pics from the beginning for those who are interested, from foundations up to running power from the houses and installing electrics...

Technically no, but close to it. How did you know?

I'd been meaning to get round to building a new shed, workshop and sometime studio (I'm a photographer) at the end of the garden since we moved in in 2018.

I got planning permission for a 6m x 3.6m structure which was necessary because of the height and the proximity to the boundary. In the end, because of a) financial reasons and b) the uncertainty about how long we will actually stay on this house I downscaled my plans to a 3.6 x 2.4m space but still with the 2.4 metre eaves height and 3+ metre apex height.

My plan was to use some large double glazing units I had, from when we replaced some aluminium sliding doors with french on the back of the house, as two large fixed windows. These were to both be on the front of the structure but then when I downscaled the design I moved them to either side of one corner.

My inspiration was the Hebridean architecture I saw a lot of when I went to Skye - simple, eavesless cabins with steeply pitched dual-pitched roofs and clad in relatively inexpensive but hard-wearing corrugated sheeting. The attached image is an inspiration shot from my mood board.

I make furniture a bit and am a handy person, but didn't have much experience with projects of this scale so spent a lot of time on YouTube and researching timber framing and how to use this sort of cladding etc. When lockdown happened as a freelancer I suddenly had NOTHING to do so it was the perfect opportunity to get started.

It took me a while to find somewhere that was open and had stock during those most strict early lockdown days. Eventually I managed to get 90% of what I needed in a basket on Fullham Timbers site and surprisingly it was as cheaper and in some cases cheaper than the then-closed Selco.

I had to wait nearly a month for everything to arrive, but when it did I had a pile of treated and untreated studwork, OSB, joist hangers, insulation, cladding and concrete blocks in my garden and the summer was on its way...

Thanks for the tip. That will have to wait until the bike is built then!

She's arrived!

Not really that helpful tbh. Did all that didn't I

Hullo...

I have some new wheels, kinlin xr-31T rims, set up for tubeless by SPA who built them. I have some WTB Venture 40C tubeless tyres.

I followed the methodology of putting on the tyres, inflating fast with a hand pump, when I heard the characteristic popping I knew the tyre had seated (soapy water helped with this) then I removed the valve core and let the air out, added the sealant through the valve and reinflated to 50psi ISH, and sloshed it around. I left them on their side overnight.

The next day they had gone down and were almost flat...

Any ideas why?

The rubber bushing used on the outside of the rim to seal the valve in is not the right profile for the deepish V of the rims and so it sort of bulges out (nice one SPA). It looks shit but I didn't think it mattered as the valve seems to be airtight.

More soapy water reveals various seeping air all around the rim/tyre join... Something I'm missing?

Thanks
Nick

Still out standing. Brother frame arrives today though so I need to come up with a plan and shift it! Will probably just sell it as a pair of straggler forks with a free bent frame!

A circular saw with a metal cutting blade, some also aviation snips at times

Yes it's my new workshop that I built over lockdown. Got to my Instagram @nickjohnwarner and watch the 'cococabin' story highlight, if you're interested to see the construction

Oh yeaaahhh. I'm a photographer and when I was a lighting assistant we used to work in Berlin a lot. Compared to the shitty black crates used to send kit from London rental places the sleek, stackable and modular grey boxes used by the German rental companies were the stuff of wet dreams. I took a snap of the Auer logo on the lid of one but it was 5 or 6 years before I finally got my own workshop and could dig out that picture again, make a huge order and have it shipped over

Well, still no frame. Brother are having some issues with congestion at felixstowe apparently. But their tantalising Instagram stories of them trying out their new frames are keeping me stoked.

Wheelset arrived from SPA yesterday so today I got the tubeless setup and out the rotors and the cassette on. And the pink dice caps of course

Nothing more I can do for now...