Garden Shed

Prisoner6409

I needed to replace the roof and felt on my garden shed and while replacing various pieces of wood that had some rotting I noticed the small piece of wood directly over the shed door had rotted and also some of the wood behind it. While wondering where I might get wood shaped like this(a kind of semi circular dip on the front with a flat back) I started wondering what exactly the purpose of this piece of wood was. It seems rain water lodged in behind it and caused some rotting of the shed wall over the door. I suspect it has something got to do with directing rain from running down the door but am not sure. Anyone know if this is the case or is it just cosmetic because if so I would be inclined to leave it off.

slimjimmc

Semi-circular dip sounds like there was a knot there before the board was sawn and the half knot simply fell out, it might not be an issue at all. Got a photo?

stoneill

It's a rain deflector above the door - any similar shaped wood available in most DIY stores will have it - or you could make your own.

Prisoner6409

Thanks guys. It sounds like a rain deflector allright although the only place on the front of the shed that has any rotting is behind this very strip of wood. I have some strips of wood used to put between the edge of a wood floor and skirting board that will suffice but am wondering now if I would be better just patching the area where it was nailed on and leaving it off.

jack of all

A few pictures would really help here, but when I did some work on my own shed last year I found the most cost effective solution to replacing timber components which had rotten, was to simply saw and plane the boards I needed from common rough sawn lengths available from the builders providers. It's a bit of work, especially if using hand tools only (consider it a good cardio vascular workout).

homer911

jack of all wrote: »

A few pictures would really help here, but when I did some work on my own shed last year I found the most cost effective solution to replacing timber components which had rotten, was to simply saw and plane the boards I needed from common rough sawn lengths available from the builders providers. It's a bit of work, especially if using hand tools only (consider it a good cardio vascular workout).

Not so easy if tongue and groove. I had to replace some boards and couldn't find the right size, so replaced three with two.

BTW, I have the same piece of rot above my door - I threw some old creosote on it that I had, not worth fixing. Shed is now 19 years old and I'm going to replace when the weather improves. My father has a shed of a similar age in a much better condition (bar the felt) as he put Sadolin on it when he first got it..

jack of all

homer911 wrote: »

Not so easy if tongue and groove. I had to replace some boards and couldn't find the right size, so replaced three with two.

Very true, I repaired a pair of TG&V sheeted garage doors for a relative- I couldn't get anything like the original board so I ended up using a wider floor board, planed chamfers on the visible face. I ended up stripping off more boards than originally intended but the end result was a good job.