What have you been doing to prep lately?

This week’s preps – November 25 2018

It’s not like I haven’t done any prepping since August 12, I just haven’t had time to write about it. I’ve actually done a few things:

  • Rebuilt the shelves in my garage
  • Cleaned out my storage unit
  • Worked on my long term food storage
  • Started researching property and jobs in the American Redoubt
  • Bought a sewing machine
  • Made lots of homemade beef jerky
  • Signed up for an online programming class
  • Finished programming my 5 UHV/VHF HT radios
  • Upgraded the sights on my carry pistol
  • Prepped my truck for winter driving
  • Bought a ping pong table

I learned the most from rebuilding my garage shelves and putting up the shed so I’ll touch on those below. Some of the other things might have you scratching your head and wondering wtf they have to do with prepping or being a Backyardsman, so I’ll post about those in the future. Anyway…

Rebuilding my garage shelves

The shelves in my garage were a falling down mess. They’d been “built” (that is stretching the term) by the previous home owner. The shelves were particle board with no support on the back side, so the sagged badly. The shelf supports were 1×4 boards nailed together at the corners so they wood was splitting. The shelves were too wide to comfortable get a car into the garage bay. One of the shelves finally collapsed so i decided to rebuild them. I used 3/4″ plywood for the shelves and made them 18″ wide (originals were 24″). for the supports I used 2×4 for the back support and 1×3 for the front. They’re not perfect, but a lot nicer than what they replaced.

Building a shed

One problem I have is lack of storage. We bought a small metal shed kit last year but never got it put up. My brother and sister are going back to China this week, so we wanted to get a shed put up before they left. A couple weeks ago we had a concrete pad poured to put it on, and over Thanksgiving weekend we got the shed put up. Instead of using our metal shed kit we decided to go with a wood framed shed. Home depot had kits for between $1000 and $3600. The $1000 shed kit looked like a cheap piece of junk and the $3600 was more than we can afford right now, so we decided to scratch build.

Our DIY shed is 7×10 feet, has a real window, and the siding is tongue and groove lumber. Total cost (including a hammer drill for installing the anchors) is about $1800. In my opinion it’s also a lot nicer shed than even the expensive model from Home Depot. It’s not perfect but we learned a lot and the next one we build will even be better. I’m really glad we decided to scratch build instead of going with a kit.

What does THAT have to do with prepping???

You might be wondering what a ping pong table has to do with prepping. What does a programming class have to do with being a Backyardsman? Or programming 2-way radios? I’ll explain it soon I hope. In the mean time, what did you do to prep this week?

Peace out,
porcupine