I built my shop starting just before the pandemic influenced price gouging and wound up going way over budget because materials escalated so quickly. I don't regret building it, and figure in the long run, it's gonna save me a bunch of maintenance on my equipment by getting it out of the weather. My little Husqvarna rider was already 7 years old, and suffering badly from exposure. It was aging so quickly and the maintenance on it was getting hard to keep up with. Seems I was repairing it before I could use it every time I cut grass. Getting it inside made all the difference. Now, I stick the key in and turn it, and the little Husky cranks, no questions asked. Obviously, I had a lot of problems to fix after finally getting it stored in a better place (not under the deck), but the difference is, the problems STAY fixed now. Between weather exposure and rodents, that thing wasn't going to last another 2 years. I had just bought the LX, and REALLY couldn't see letting the same thing happen to it. The cost of the shop was just some insurance that I was gonna have to eat the cost for.
One thing that can help is find a way to store any and all pressure treated lumber you might be able to use again. If you know someone that's tearing down a deck or an old barn, go help out, and more than likely they'll let you have any material you can salvage just to get rid of it. I find that it isn't any quicker to just destroy that kind of stuff (especially if attached to a house) than it is to disassemble it and salvage as much as possible.
I just built this chicken coop last week from 100% recycled lumber from two deck renovations. A lot better than the cheap little coops from TSC, for sure. My only expense in this was the cross ties I bought earlier this year for a different project, the new metal roofing, and fasteners I've accumulated from all the home improvement projects I've done. The windows are the original bathroom windows from my house. A couple of those things I was asked many times "WHY are you keeping that?" I built the frame in the back yard near my shop, and with a little bracing, it was strong enough to pick up and carry to this location and place it on the ties using the clamp-on bucket forks on my LX. The beauty of recycled lumber is that it's often very dry and very light to handle. If it's PT lumber, it isn't real hard to store because it doesn't have to be inside, especially if it has been painted with deck stain. Makes for a pretty cool looking stressed building.
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