Epic Failures: The Garden Shed

Occasionally, I like to tell people a little about some of the times I screwed up with a home improvement job or home repair. It gives people a perspective that home improvement is a learning process and that sometimes you need to screw up in order to move ahead… and it’s funny to boot.

I like to call this little gem The House That Brock Built, and it involved my first attempt at building a shed in my backyard. This was a few years ago, and I was tired of using my garage as my primary storage area for gardening and other lawn tools. So I decided to buy one of those prefabricated shed that you can purchase from some of the big-box home improvement stores.

It looked simple to build. I mean, let’s face it, it’s four walls and a roof, right? How hard could it be? The first time I put it up, I was so confident that I didn’t even bother looking at the instructions. I was the big, bad do-it-yourselfer, and I didn’t need any directions to take care of a little shed.

My first attempt ended with a lopsided shed and a bunch of “extra parts.” But that’s not the worst of it. I decided that this is not the shed that I wanted it to be, so I disassembled it and started over, this time with the directions in hand. The shed looked great. I have to admit that it looked really good, and I couldn’t have been prouder. (I have been married for more than a decade now, so I am finally good at taking directions.)

I had started to put the tools in the shed and was actually inside of it when a strong gust of wind hit out of nowhere. It was spring, and while it was a pretty tough gust, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for the season. The shed started to lean a little bit under the pressure of the wind, but I didn’t think anything of it.

Then it fell on me. Yes, folks, it fell on me. Boards were broken, screws were stripped and my wonderfully put together shed fell over. I crawled out, put the wreckage in the back of a truck and went back to the big-box store. I told them what happened, and they gave me a new one, plus a nice gift card for nearly getting killed.

This time, when I put it up I anchored it to the ground and added a few supports of my own. It still stands today, and I happy to say I can look back on this and laugh. What’s your DIY horror story?

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