Photo Essays About The Construction of Oak au Vino

October 18th 2014: After the pad was graded in May, I needed to wait and let the dirt settle. Being a drought year that settling was slow - to the point of none! I let a couple of rain storms happen before starting anything. Meanwhile of course, we built the Sangha Rest Shed, added a lot of things to the Sangha Shed Pergola, got the basement floor inspection done, and a myriad of other activities. We also bought some of the materials for the Oak au Vino shed beams and got them painted. The beams and other materials are now stacked on saw horses at the scene of the shed raising.

November 7th 2014: Finally, ready to start. I started by positioning and levelling the first beam, on the north side of the shed. At this moment the beam is not levelled yet, but is a reference point for measuring and placing the other corner blocks.

November 7th 2014: It took only three hours of trial and error to get the beams and their supporting block piles squared, levelled and straightened ad infinitum y nauseum. Phew! Time for bed!

April 4th 2015: We returned to the land ready to finish the Oak au Vino shed and do the Spring gardening work. Before I left in December I had tied a huge 50-feet by 40-feet tarp over the shed because the roof was unfinished. When we got out of the car, I could see that we had a serious problem.

The tarp was like a badly mauled parachute. It was all laying around the base of the shed on the south and eastern walls with the largest amount spread out to the northeast. I ran down and found that yes, water had certainly gotten in, but nothing was damaged. I walked around the perimeter of the shed and quickly realized that the winds must have been ferocious at least for a short period of time.

This photo is of the southeastern corner foundation blocks. The shed had moved about 1-1/2 inches to the east from the center of the flat blocks.... Oh boy! We were lucky the shed did not blow over, let alone slide off the footer blocks.

April 4th 2015: The southwestern corner block had moved the same 1-1/2 inches to the east.

April 4th 2015: The center block on the western side had moved the same 1-1/2 inches to the east. The uniformity of the movement was a good thing. At least the shed was not twisted on its foundation. We planned to put backfill around the foundation blocks and cover that with gravel later in 2015 or 2016.