Gambrel Roof Plans

My wife and I bought our home with an attached carport. Sure enough, a few years after we moved in, we had so much stuff sitting in there that we couldn’t even fit a little bit of our car under the roof. I won’t lie, it was an eyesore, and we were feeling a bit of the hairy eyeball from some of the neighbors.

We don’t have a big yard, so we wanted to attach a storage shed to the back of the carport, which had a wood-frame rear wall with siding. We wanted to build the shed frame out from the back, and then cut a door in the rear wall.

We thought with all the special work required, that we’d need custom plans from an architect, but after making a few calls, we realized that was way beyond our budget, so we started looking for DIY plans that maybe we could modify to meet our needs.

A lot of our searching turned up plans and stores selling pre-built, metal carports, but finally, we found a great set of 12×16 shed plans, sized to match our carport, with styling options we could adapt to fit in with our homes exterior design.

I’m pretty handy and so framing the shed and attaching it to the back of the carport wasn’t too big of a deal. If you’ve ever worked on a porch, deck or patio for your house, then you’ll have no trouble building a shed. The original contractor had done a pretty lousy job with the siding, and one of the posts had a little water damage, but it was not too bad, and so we applied some wood rot treatment, and made sure we had a nice tight seal between the carport roof and the shed, with adequate drainage to prevent additional moisture from collecting.

The big new thing I tackled with this project was cutting the door, here’s the most important things I learned, in case you’re considering a similar design:

• Figure out where your wiring, pipes and ducts are before you cut – we didn’t have any plumbing or duct-work, but we did have a light-switch, crazy given the water damage, but we got an electrician out to safely cap the wire and move the carport light onto another circuit. I hate messing with electricity, and if you find wiring, plumbing or duct-work in the way of your door, it’s probably time to call a contractor.
• Make room for the door-frame – seems obvious, right? But make sure you’ve got enough room for the structural framing.
• Don’t forget the floor – not such a big deal for us, since it was just a storage shed, but we did add a splashguard to the bottom of the door to prevent rainwater from flowing under

We’re super happy with our new shed, and I managed to acquire two new power tools along the way (score!). Let me know if you’re looking to attach a shed to your carport, and I’ll try to answer your questions. Otherwise, good luck and happy building!