Weatherboard, Sarking, Studs & Bearers: A guide to the wood in your shed

We use a lot of #ShedLingo at Gillies and Mackay, and sometimes that can be a bit confusing for you, our lovely customers.

And as you all know by now, I love to share my shed knowledge with you so you’re fully informed about what goes into creating our amazing sheds (and other timber buildings!).

This time it’s all about the wood… weatherboard, sarking, studs and bearers.

“What are they?” I hear you say… well my sheddies, here is a wee clip explaining all:

Video Transcription

I’m talking about wood, and I’m going to speak to you about four things that relate to wood in your shed.

The first one, the most common, is weatherboard, and that’s the cladding on the walls of your shed.

We use 19 mm Scandinavian redwood cladding, and it’s a tongue and groove weatherboarded sheet profile.

There are lots of different alternatives for cladding your building, but we find in Scotland that this one is the most durable against the rain.

The next thing I would say is sarking, which is the boarding which is used in the roof, so we use again a 16 mm tongue and groove redwood sarking profile, and then on top of that goes the felt, but that’s what you see from the inside up.

The next would be studs which is your framing. The studs we use is three by an inch and a half or 75 millimetres by 38 millimetres, if you want to talk new money. That’s pressure treated, which is when we inject it with a treatment that protects it against rot and fungi.

The last thing that’s most common for me to use is bearers, which are the bits of timber that are not attached to your shed which we use to put the shed on top of.

When the boys come out to your site we will put the blocks down first, and then the bearers go on top of that, and then the floor joists go on top of that, then the flooring and then the shed.

Those are the four most common things that are related to the timber in your building, weatherboard, sarking, framing and bearers.