I live in upstate New York and wanted a storage shed for firewood. Normally I would stack the split wood and cover with a tarp, but after getting twelve feet of snow within ten days last winter, I didn’t want to wrestle with tarps again. I also didn’t want to suck up a tarp into my snowblower again. If you’ve never done that, you have no idea how much fun there is when trying to remove a tarp that’s melted and wrapped around the intake axle.
So, my biggest decision was whether to build the shed myself, using 2 x 4s and siding, or buy a kit and assemble it myself. After doing much online research into shed kits, I found the Arrow shed line. They have a great selection of sizes and materials with a good price range. I was on my way to shed nirvana, or so I thought. I should mention that I also compared prices with Lowes and Home Depot, but balked when I saw the shipping charges: around $200 on average. The big box stores don’t normally stock the shed kits, so you have to special order them.
The online store I ordered from was CSN Sheds, a division of CSN Stores. My primary reason for selecting CSN was the free shipping. They make arrangements to ship “back of the truck” to your destination. This is a great savings, but involves some work on your part. As the delivery is usually done by an 18-wheeler, you must have room for the truck to maneuver near your house or garage. In my case, I gave them the address for the local high school parking lot and slid the package into the back of my pickup truck. The package weighed over 200 lbs, so it’s not a job for a petite female or a girly-boy. Also, the trucking firm isn’t responsible to assist you with unloading it.
Site preparation for the shed is critical, as you’ll need a very level surface to put the foundation kit on. In my case, I used 3 inches of gravel followed by 3 inches of a driveway mix (sometimes called “runner crush”). I tamped it and continually checked the cross level. After that, I then assembled the foundation kit and placed it on top of the gravel.
Then the freaking fun began. There are over 400 sheet metal screws, 200 bolts and 200 washers that fit the shed together. I don’t know what the Arrow design engineers were thinking but it must have been a new form of do-it-yourself torture. The screws are tiny, the bolts are tiny and you will drop each one of the 800 tiny pieces an average of 1.5 times during assembly. If you have big, thick fingers, don’t even attempt to assemble it yourself. Hire a Tim Burton character with bony fingers.
The metal panels extremely flimsy and the assembly instructions specifically warn you not to put it together if it’s windy. No kidding. Just breathing on them before they are all connected together will cause a collapse worse than the big bad wolf did on the three little pigs’ house. You see, you have to screw the four corners on first, using only one screw. The corners want to naturally bend and fall down, so I had to prop them up with stepladders and saw horses. After that, the wall panels went on almost uneventfully. The biggest problem is when you are trying to screw through two pieces of the sheet metal with the microscopic screws. They don’t always go in completely.
But it was the roof that almost caused me to become a suicide bomber of the shed. The end panels are even flimsier than the rest of the shed. I had to get my wife to help hold them in place while I wrestled with mating surfaces up for screwing. The roof panels didn’t line up with the so-called roof trusses, and trying to find the microscopic holes was ridiculous. I wound up drilling the screws into the trusses regardless of where the holes were. It turned out better anyway.
My house is on three acres so my neighbors’ houses are not very close. Good thing. I dropped so many F-bombs and other obscene epithets that a passerby would have thought a Sopranos episode was playing. It took me two full, eight-hour days to put the damn thing together and then a couple of hours for the sliding doors.
Was it worth it? Well, it looks good as the metal has a wood-like finish for the walls rather than a ratty, regular sheet metal finish. But I regret not having built it from scratch with wood materials. It would have been sturdier and a LOT less frustrating than this project.
I have no problem with CSN Sheds, as their ordering and delivery process were top-notch. But I don’t recommend assembling an Arrow shed unless you are a masochist with needle-like fingers and a graduate of anger-management classes.
