How To Clad Your Shed With Some DIY Tips

We are very quick to make sure the inside of our homes are kept in spick and span condition and if anything goes wrong inside our homes we will undoubtedly either fix it ourselves or get a handy man to come along and fix it.

Sadly this cannot be said of anything outside our homes such as a shed or summer house. The reason is quite often out of sight, out of mind. This of course is not a good idea for example if you have a shed in the garden. The chances are it will be made of wood and if you live in the UK, as I do, the winter weather can be very harsh and your shed will rot away very quickly and you will either have to pull it down or repair it.

Hopefully you will only have to repair the shed and one of the best ways of doing this, is to clad it. I am going to go through the steps of re-cladding your shed. This article How To Clad Your Shed & Some Ideas For It is also very useful and is worth a read before you clad your shed.

There are a few different types of cladding that you can use for your shed such as composite cladding. A couple of different types of cladding are overlapping cladding and tongue and groove cladding. Basically overlapping is overlapping the timbers and tongue and groove interlock. Both of these two cladding processes are very effective but for me the overlapping system is much better.

Overlapping cladding or shiplap cladding will give you durability and is very weatherproof to withstand the British winters. It is also very breathable and will contract and expand due to the weather conditions and it won’t warp as long as you have used good quality timber that has been treated and ultimately will give your shed a fantastic looking finish. Before you start to clad your shed it’s worth adding a breathable membrane. This will stop rain getting inside your shed and will help rain run-off.

Installing the shiplap cladding is very simple and takes just a few steps.

All woodworking projects require one most important aspect and that is measuring. TIP! Make sure everything goes together properly. Take your time to take precision measurements from the very first piece of cladding. If you get the first one right then everything will fall into place perfectly and the cladding will look awesome on your shed.

Once your measurements are done now is the time to saw and cut your cladding. You can do this with a handsaw but if you have access to a circular saw it will give much better precision cutting of your cladding. Don’t measure all of the cladding at once. Always measure and cut as you go along this will mean that all of your cladding lengths are exactly the same.

Now you cut the cladding for the first side of your shed you can begin to put them in place using nails to hold in place. Don’t hammer them right in just yet then use a spirit level to make the cladding is perfectly level. Once you have done that you firmly secure all of the cladding on the first side. Just repeat this method for all sides of your shed.

Now you have totally re-cladded your shed. You can then add some personality and character by painting the shed in a colourful wood stain so it becomes a feature in your garden.

Have you re-clad a shed? What method did you use? I would love to hear in the comments below.