My Shed Roof Construction

Honestly, roof construction has always intimidated me. Trusses, angles and spans seemed to be very complicated. In this case, however, I had a flat roof already put together on a frame. It was a strange set up. When it was a patio awning connected to my house it had the frame on top. My thought was to just flip it over and screw it to the top plate of my walls. The I learned differently.

When my friend came over to help me lift it and place it on the walls, he said, “This is interesting material.” He proceeded to inform me that it was material used to cover semi-trailers, and that if I turned it over it would actually catch water which would then flood my shed. that was helpful information. but he would help.
As it turned out he had enough aluminum pans (not cookware, but pans that are connected to make aluminum awnings) to cover my shed. He wanted the material that we were discussing and I wanted the pans, so we traded.

The pans turned out to be 18 inches short, but had put up a few awnings of this style. With a little overlapping and lots of caulking, we screwed the pans around the walls. I added two cross beams for support in the middle. One of them is where I put the overlap for the extension pieces.

So without too much work my shed roof was on. It had a 10 inch drop from front to back for the water to run off. I even made it fancy by adding some fascia and a gutter on the back (that was free too from another friend). Sometime I’d like to build trusses for a shed roof, but I think I’ll read up on that before I try it. That’s another reason to get a shed plan. It has the dimensions for roof construction too.