8x10 Garden Storage Shed

Call your local building department. Ask: do I need a permit for an 80 sq ft accessory structure, and what are the setbacks from my property line?

This phone call takes ten minutes. Skipping it can cost you the entire shed. It is the single highest-leverage step in this plan.

Excavate ~4", lay landscape fabric, fill with 3–4" of crushed gravel, and compact and level it obsessively.

Set the three PT 4x4 skids on the gravel, running the 10-ft direction. Level them to each other in both directions.

Everything above is only as square and level as this. There is no fixing it later.

Build the floor frame on the skids: rim joists with joists 16" on center. Check the diagonals — get it square now.

Sheathe with 3/4" T&G plywood, glued and screwed. The floor is now your work platform for everything else.

Build each wall lying flat on the floor deck — bottom plate, studs 16" o.c., top plate. Frame the door and window openings with proper headers.

Stand the walls, brace them, nail them together at the corners, then add the second top plate lapping the corners to tie the walls into one box.

Plumb and brace before you trust anything.

Make one rafter, with its birdsmouth and plumb cut, and test-fit it on both ends of the building. Only when it's perfect do you use it as a template for the other eleven.

Set the ridge board, hang the rafters in opposing pairs. This is the two-person part — don't try it alone.

Sheathe the roof with 1/2" ply. Then, in order: drip edge, roofing felt, starter course, shingles working up from the eave, ridge cap last.

Order matters. Each layer overlaps the one below so water always runs onto the outside of the next layer down. Get the order wrong and you've built a funnel into your shed.

Sheathe and side the walls. Cut the door opening, build a simple frame-and-panel door from leftover framing and siding, hang it on exterior hinges.

Trim the corners and around the door — trim is what makes the difference between 'a shed' and 'a nice shed', and it's also what keeps water out of the seams.

Caulk every seam water could sit in. Prime and paint, or stain.

Then walk around it in the next hard rain and look for drips. Fix them immediately — a shed leak found in year one is caulk; found in year five it's rot.