Garden Shed Rehab Project – Doors

I have a building on my property that was used as a pony barn/stall. It was built using particle board. I installed a workbench inside and a peg board for tools. This was fine until the particle board doors rotted off and a hole appeared in the particle board back wall. The roof was made of shingles and looked okay, but to get through the winter, I needed to fix the doors as well as the hole in the wall. As most of the wood panel was rotten, the existing doors needed to be removed and replaced. I thought about replacing the entire shed with a prefab building, but since i like working with wood and a new shed would be costly, i thought that I would give remodeling the old shed a try as a less expensive alternative to replacement.

First i needed a front barn type door and to fix the back wall before winter. I was a little apprehensive about building doors from scratch, so I went to the local Library and borrowed a book about building sheds. In the book, I found a plan for a Z type door. This door is pretty simple consisting of wood planks side by side with a Z shaped brace to hold it together. To repair the back wall, I decided to create a doorway to go into the wooded area of my property, the shed acts as part of my fence around my back lawn, i used the same plan as for the front barn doors except i split the doror in two parts like a dutch door, so I could just open the top for ventilation. For both doors I used 1×6 pine planks (which actually are 5 1/2 inchs) to make two 36 inch doors for a 71 inch opening. 6 1×6 pieces gave me 33 inches, so i usd a 1×4(3.5 inches) which gave me 36.5 inch doors. I used 1×4 for the zbracing securing with 1 1-4 screws, two screws per brace per panel. Surprisingly the door was very rigid.

Hints for making doors:

1. When selecting wood for the doors, lay out boards on floor of lumberyard to check if they fit tightly against one another.
2. if possible, use waterproof finish before hanging doors on shed.

UPDATE: December 1, 2012
The windstorm resulting from Hurricane sandy toppled a large pine tree atop of my shed, totally destroying it. This ends the debate of whether to renovate the old shed or to build a new one has evolved into whether to build it myself or buy/install a prebuilt shed. I have looked through a couple books from the library which is how i found the door building technique for the old shed. I also looked online at local shed builders and I was looking at tinyhouse plans. I visited my local Home Depot and Lowes. Lowes had many display models onsite and Home Depot had a nice “build your own” application on its website. So far all I am sur about is the size 12 feet by 10 feet.