I had the same impression of Tuff-Shed. Like, if these ones at Home Depot are supposed to be your demo units and sell me on buying one, you might want to make sure the door isn’t sagging.
My BOM was pricey because I was going to insulate and heat/cool it, and had some nifty sliding glass doors picked out.
Then there’s my wife who was afraid I’d injure myself halfway through (admittedly, a valid concern 
) and leave our yard with an eyesore until I recuperated.
The one my neighbor had delivered wasn’t in that bad of shape, but OSB siding and what looked to be 2x3 framing are negatives in my book. The shed they previously demolished might have been the same brand and sported the same construction. They also appear to be short to a degree I won’t tolerate as a fella that’s 6’4".
It would be nice to be able to have power, lighting, climate control - but that’s a phase 2 wish list, replete with all the aggravating expenses of hiring a contractor and permitting.
Home Despot pricing is something I’d surely like to avoid and local construction site scrap piles are curiously deficient in 8’ 2x4s and whole sheets of plywood.
That depends entirely upon what time you visit the site and whether they have video surveillance. 
How I avoided the the trap the city lays for you is electricity connected to it. If you hard wire it, Arlington assumes it it now something akin to a building.
So I a ran buried armored weatherproof conduit out to it, had it come out above ground, nice GFI weather outlet attached to the side of the building.
I then plugged in an extension cord that went inside the “auxiliary building”. Miracle of miracles - running an extension cord isn’t considered “wired” if it didn’t go into the building “permanently” I merely had a convenient outdoor plug. to plug into.
Working on such a project myself. No HOA in my neighborhood, but the building code limits of <120ft² and <10 ft tall to dodge the building permit requirement are a challenging envelope to work within - especially if you insist on trying to squeeze a rollup door into it. Going to print out a copy of that official city document and have it handy in case my busybody neighbors snitch on me.
That’s the same size as Arlington.
Roll-up door? Wouldn’t roll up Wall be a better descriptor.
That’s what Richardson has, I believe. 120 square feet you just need a sketch of your lot with an X on it where the shed will be. Any larger and you have to submit a measured drawing. No HOA though, thank goodness.
Preliminary BOM is coming in markedly cheaper than I was expecting:
Missing some details - door(s), a few buckets of fasteners, paint, trim, roofing filler/adhesives, insulation, etc - that will push it up past the $2k mark. I’ll want a compound miter saw to speed the cutting which will add some ~$250 to the total, but that’s a durable tool thus kinda exempt from the cost accounting.
Decided to omit the rollup door. I need to do a ramp of some sorts anyway which I’ll integrate as a 3-part door - ramp drops down, upper leaves swing to the side. Should be more secure (all latches inside) while also reducing the need for headroom. As such I’ll do a more conventional 3:12 roof as opposed to the 1:12 I originally planned on which will buy me ~6" of margin against that 10’ height limit.
X2 on being worth having suitable nailers.
Been a while since I stood up framing, but it was a huge time saver. I vaguely remember using different nailers for the framing and the sheathing, but that may simply have been that we had nailers with overlapping ranges, and it was easier to not need to switch supplies and comfigurations back and forth.
Preliminary plan is to drill and screw most framing and paneling.
I did 2 sections of fence using that method and my sanity seems to have emerged no worse for the wear. Layout / fixturing / workholding is going to eat up more time than any plausible method of securing the pieces together.
To be clear, I expect this to be a multi-weekend project, possibly spanning a month or more.
Ain’t nothing wrong with making it all about the build, with the fringe benefit of having a shed to store stuff in when you’re done… 
Sometimes the execution itself is extremely satisfying. However, I suspect I’ll come to appreciate use of the structure once I’ve finally finished tinkering with it since substantial completion is not a valid excuse to leave it alone.
I see I’m not the only one that does that.
Faced with the prospect of actually getting started on this thing this weekend, simplification of the design has set in.
Found a true 36 x 80 door, which happens to have a skosh more clearance than necessary to get my widest piece of equipment in and out. Out with the 3-part door and out with the accessory access door. A ramp can still be arranged if I feel the need, but the chipper-shredder is not an every weekend tool, so perhaps it need not be integrated. Pre-fabbing the framing - the bulk in pairs of identical side-sections - should make for a brief assembly sequence.
I’m fretting the piers yet. I helped my father build an 8x16 shed ~25 years ago that used landscape timbers as piers with up to ~18" of clear under the back end; don’t recall the count - might have been a mere dozen on 4’ spacing. I dug those boreholes with a typical 6" posthole digger then we simply filled as if they were fenceposts. Dad loaded that shed up with some untold mass of his lumber stash and it looks to still be standing:
Sure, it could be any shed with the artifact-y mess thart is 3D satellite view at that level of granularity, but the 9/2014 street view reveals distinct features and design embellishments :
Given that I’m not going to load tons of lumber into it, perhaps I’m overthinking it - gravel at the bottom, flare the top ~6" if I’m feeling really paranoid and call it done?
So after endless refinement of the plan I broke ground today.
I’ll surely find some execution Problems™, but using my manual digger to correct is small potatoes relative to the exhausting effort it would have been without the benefit of the internal combustion engine. Took an amazingly small amount of gas to boot.
Been wanting one of those ever since I first met one.
Not that I have any use for it (or want much use for it), but…still want.
Good writeup!
And good luck!
No reverse if stuck: I know someone who did that with a 6 inch auger driven by a 30 hp diesel tractor. Think it took him a couple months to get it back off. I think the PTO shaft still has a place where it sticks because of the twist it picked up from that incident. I’ve come close a couple times, but so far the worst I have done is shear the bolt between the auger body and its bit.
